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BEYOND THE VEIL 


FOR NOW WE SEE IN A MIRROR, DARKLY ; BUT THEN 
FACE TO FACE : NOW I KNOW IN PART ; BUT 
THEN SHALL I KNOW EVEN AS 
ALSO I AM KNOWN 


• 

G. B. WILLCOX 


AUTHOR OF “THE PRODIGAL SON, A MONOGRAPH,” 
AND “THE PASTOR AMIDST HIS FLOCK” 


L C 0 ,v . x 

V IQfiT 'V 


NOV 


19 


of wa* 






New York : ANSON D. F. RANDOLPH & 
COMPANY (Inc.), 182 Fifth Avenue 





Copyright, 1894, by 

Anson D. F. Randolph & Company (Inc.). 


PRESS OF 

E. o. jenkins’ son, 

NEW YORK. 


INSCRIBED 


TO 


m. j. to 







NOTE. 


The Eternal Home, in the author’s opinion, 
has been too much regarded as a sort of celestial 
monastery, in which two or three occupations, 
culled from the whole range of our earthly life, 
have been supposed to be those, exclusively, of 
the redeemed. This limited view has descended 
to us from mediaeval times, in which certain 
rounds of religious service were regarded as en- 
dued with a special sanctity. 

“Beyond the Veil” is an attempt to convey a 
view of the celestial life in which occupations 
“ secular ” as well as u religious ” are all alike 
pervaded and inspired by the love to God and His 
creatures which exalts the society above. 






BEYOND THE VEIL. 



I. 


June 10, 1880 . 

I mean to begin a diary. I don’t suppose that 
any one, however secret he meant to keep such a 
thing, was ever thoroughly candid in disclosing his 
inner life. But I purpose to be at least nearly so, 
and then to lock up the document. It will be in- 
teresting reading for me by and by. Belle Stick- 
ney, they say, intends to come out at the head of 
the class and get the gold medal. I intend she 
shall not. She is an awful plodder, but learns 
slowly. I can get a lesson in half her time. She 
is bright in spots, like her tulle wfith its spangles. 
She rendered finely in Caesar the other day, and 
had some good things in her essay ; but, on the 
whole, I don’t see that she is much above average. 
If she is to lead us all, she will have to shoot 
straight up like a rocket from her present level. 

June 13 . 

Half a dozen of us girls are invited to Susie 
Winthrop’s party next Tuesday. Belle will out- 

( 5 ) 


6 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


shine us all, I hear, in her new blue silk, and the 
solitaire diamond in her engagement-ring. She 
may have fine clothes, with her father’s long 
purse ; but, as sure as my name is Alice, she shows 
a sad poverty of taste. That is a thing that money 
won’t buy. I hear that when her mother was in 
Sherman’s lately, and told him she wanted a 
picture, he asked her in what style of art ? Upon 
which she plumed herself, and replied, “ The latest 
style, of course! Do you suppose I want old 
fashions ? ” Belle measures the value of a thing 
by the flash and glare of its colors. I should ex- 
pect her to rate a tune by the noise it made. 

Juke 15 . 

As I look over these two entries I am ashamed 
of their crusty spirit. But I set out to be honest 
— to put down not what I ought to feel, but what 
I do feel. Perhaps it will work like a stethoscope, 
to tell me how the heart is acting, and so help me 
to improve. I don’t pretend to like Belle. If I 
am not amiable, I am at least no hypocrite. 

Juke 16 . 

What a miserable, sneaking comfort I was at- 
tempting to find in those last words ! How much 
worse that petty jealousy looks, when precipitated 
here, in black and white, than when held in solu- 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


7 


tion within me ! See here, Alice Herbert ! I’m 
going to take you in hand. The next time I catch 
you sneering at anybody, in your thought, in this 
style, I mean to put a pen in your hand, and take 
you by the wrist, and make you set it down here, 
in plain English, for your jaundiced eyes to study, 
till you are as thoroughly ashamed of yourself as 
you ought to be. You shall discover what vermin 
of envy and malice infest the closets and corners 
of your inner life, while you are patting yourself 
complacently as rather a model character. You 
shall see yourself, not as in an old, Greek, tarnished 
“mirror, darkly,” but as in a modern, bevel-edged, 
plate-glass article, “ face to face.” So there ! 

June 18 . 

And now you have been at it again, Miss Alice ! 
You tried to capture Harry Ellinger at the party. 
You thought you could charm him with some of 
the bright things you had planned beforehand to 
say. But you found him turning his eyes ab- 
stractedly off toward Belle, did you ? And your 
thought was a stream of gall. “ Hateful thing ! 
Bedizened with jewelry ! It’s that he is admiring ! 
What does he care for her f How long will it 
last ? See her simpering to draw him ! Well, if 
he can’t see through her, little I care for him ! 
If I thought there wasn’t more of me than there 


8 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


is of her — ” How does it look, Alice Herbert, as 
you have it here ? 

June 19 . 

Dr. Bentley announced, last Sunday, that there 
were signs of a revival, and he and the deacons 
called a meeting of the church. They want to em- 
ploy an evangelist. I don’t see much sign of “ the 
refreshing,” as he called it, among the girls. But, 
if it comes, it will be something new. I suppose 
we shall all have to go. It would delight mother 
to see me a better girl. 

June 27 . 

Bev. Mr. Newman has come and commenced 
his work. I don’t know much of evangelists. Per- 
haps he is not like the rest. But he has a busi- 
ness-like way of proceeding, as if he felt himself 
fully master of the situation, that I do not alto- 
gether like. One thing I do like is that he 
knows no rich, no poor. We are, to him, all alike 
souls to be saved or lost. In the inquiry-room lie 
pays no more attention to seal-skins than to thread- 
bare shawls. In his looks he is just a love of a 
man, and the girls are all charmed with him. In 
speaking, he can play on one’s feelings as I do on 
the keys of my piano, and draw out any response 
he wants. He seems to know how to move us as 
a mass. I find this material sympathy already 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


9 


taking hold of me. Our girls are beginning to go 
to every meeting, and the boys wait round the 
doors to escort us home. There has been such a 
pressure for a recess in the school, that Miss 
Thurston has given way, in part, and for the 
present will keep only in the forenoons. She is 
awfully nice about it. 

June 29. 

The meetings pack the old church, aisles, gal- 
leries, and all. The singing, by the whole con- 
gregation, lifts one as on great wings. It is just 
lovely ! Nothing is talked about in the streets, 
the stores, the postoffice, everywhere, but the re- 
vival. I have never seen the town so moved be- 
fore. It breaks up the dull round of our life. I 
am not sure but it strikes into us, and subsoils, as 
the farmers say, more deeply than other events. 
Anyway, it seems to be having that effect on me. 
I have been with the girls in an inquiry-meeting 
two or three times, and think it does me good. 

July 1. 

A dozen or more from our school think of join- 
ing our church, and I think I should like to go 
with them. But, much to my surprise, papa and 
mamma object. They think I had better wait and 
think it over. I can’t see why. I’m sure I am 
honest and sincere. The girls think they will be 


10 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


all in white when they join, with blue sashes, and 
it would be lovely to be among them. I don’t 
want to sit off one side and look on. I believe I 
shall not go, that day, at all. 

July 10. 

Mr. Newman left a week ago. The revival tide 
has begun to ebb. I’m already half in doubt 
whether papa and mamma were not right in op- 
posing me. I’m afraid they knew me better 
than I knew myself. I thought the depths in me 
were stirred. Was it more than ripples ? I don’t 
seem to be any readier to sacrifice myself for an 
unselfish end than I was before. Some of the 
girls are perhaps more in earnest than I. But to 
some of them, I’m afraid, it was a matter of sighs 
and tears, and then of glorification. The whole 
affair brings a gloomy feeling over me. The 
solemn warning, “ the last state of that man was 
worse than the first,” keeps echoing within. 
Have I grounded at high tide f and will no new 
flood ever float me off again ? Anyway, I seem 
to be in no condition to return to the subject now. 
But I’m glad I did not join the church. 


II. 


May 28, 1884. 

It is nearly four years since I touched my diary ! 
I find it here, under lock and key — a strange con- 
fession of heart-secrets — of what seems now an 
age ago. In these four years I have passed out 
of girlhood. Here is a carte-de-visite of myself, 
taken at about the date of this last entry. How 
green it looks ! Is it possible that that pudding- 
face can ever have been mine ? And the diary is 
much such a photograph of an inner life, as I 
suppose I must acknowledge to have been mine. 
I should be ashamed not to believe that I have a 
personality now, which inspheres that, with a 
liberal margin on every side. Indeed, I trust it 
has dissolved that old nucleus and raised its qual- 
ity by the larger infusion. 

May 30. 

Dr. Bentley’s parsonage is somewhat like one 
of his discourses — long, dry, rather rambling in 
structure, with no end of divisions, rather grim than 
cheery, decidedly antiquated and standing some- 

( 11 ) 


12 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


what remote from the travelled highway. I went 
over there, this afternoon, to see when Mrs. Bent- 
ley can release Polly Meekam, and found I was 
the silly fly that had walked into the spider’s 
parlor. For the old Doctor was lying in wait for 
me. It was just my luck that he should come 
himself to the door. Of course, in dismay, I 
made him understand that I had come to see Mrs. 
Bentley — but I was too late. He would call her 
soon, but wanted first, if it would be agreeable, 
etc., etc., to have a little religious conversation. 
Upon which he ushered me into the sitting-room, 
pointed me to a seat on the sofa, planted a chair 
before me, with his spectacles up on his forehead, 
and began with unction, his inquisitorial torture. 
I had just been at Doctor Liscomb’s dental rooms 
to purchase a few dollars’ worth of his variety of 
torture, and had a wedge between two teeth in 
anticipation of another like bargain to-morrow. 
All this put me in a delightful mood for enjoying 
the Doctor’s infliction. I cannot remember half 
he said. It was the usual round — as dry and hard 
as the beat of a mill-horse! While I was squirm- 
ing on the rack, I looked at the green paper win- 
dow-shades, and up at Mrs. Bentley’s mother’s old- 
framed sampler on the wall ; at the high antique 
secretary, stiff and stern as a grenadier ; at the 
plaster monstrosities, perched for ornament on the 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


13 


mantel, and tried to resign myself meekly to my 
fate. I must know I was a sinner, and I must 
lay down the weapons of my rebellion — between 
these two lines of exhortation he moved back 
and forth for a solid hour. I don’t know any- 
thing about his rebellion. I didn’t tell him he 
was a Quixote, discovering a Goliath in a wind- 
mill, and a host of the enemy in a flock of sheep. 
I had better manners. But, after I had endured 
him for about twenty minutes, I let his words slip 
through from one ear to the other, like water over 
rocks, and sat and quietly studied him through the 
rest of the ordeal. I suppose of course I’m a sin- 
ner. It seems as necessary for any poor mortal to 
be that as to have two eyes and two hands. I 
would like religion well enough — if I could be 
sure the purchase would be worth the price. But 
the Doctor will never convert me. 

I said I sat still and endured him. No, I remem- 
ber now, I bestirred myself in defense. I threw 
up a rampart of sceptical doubts, for a part of the 
time, around me. I gave him to understand that 
he must carry that, by storm or siege, before he 
would reach the stronghold within. I tramped 
the outworks and fought him off at every point. 
The whole battle was transferred from the heart 
he was attacking to the head that he had supposed 
already his. I challenged the Bible, immortality, 


14 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


the existence of God — anything that offered a 
foothold where to make a stand. I really think 
the good, old gentleman believed me sincere in it 
all. Of course I kept on a sober face, and, as I let 
fly at him one horrid heresy after another, and 
threw myself into the defense so stoutly, I came 
to half believe, for the moment, what I was 
saying. Anyway, I fought him off so heroically 
that he finally raised the siege, and retreated up- 
stairs to call Mrs. Bentley. 

I was a little afraid he would report his discom- 
fiture to her, and that she would take the field 
with reinforcements. She would have met my 
reserves if she had, for my will was now well up. 
But either I was wrong in my apprehension that 
he had reported me, or she accepted the situation 
as hopeless. There was no further religious talk. 
She could release Polly to-morrow, and I came 
away. 

The long walk down their dooryard and home 
was delightful. The maples and elms and chest- 
nuts had awoke from their winter’s sleep and 
donned their green costumes for the summer fes- 
tival. Dr. Bentley’s magnificent old elm strikes 
me as a type of the model gentleman — so stiff and 
sturdy in holding its ground, but so graceful and 
compliant, yielding to every breeze. The robins 
made a musical aviary of the branches and foliage, 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


15 


and the honeysuckle under Mrs. Bentley’s win- 
dow, with the humming-birds foraging around it, 
breathed its heavy fragrance on me as I went by. 
I hope Polly will come promptly to-morrow. If 
she doesn’t get mother’s gown done soon, t^ere 
will be no time to have mine in season for Mabel 
Pollock’s party. 


III. 

June 3. 

I was right in supposing Dr. Bentley had re- 
ported me to his good wife. He put her into a 
fidget about me, and she began on me to-day. It 
was as we were coming from Scoville’s grocery, 
where we met, unluckily, and she stuck to me 
like a thistle-down. I’m sorry for the good old 
lady. The girls say she has a horror of Shak- 
spere, as a writer for theatres. She has worn the 
same old, black bombazine for five years at least. 
The venerable garment has gained a unique indi- 
viduality of its own. I can tell it so far off that I 
easily infer what wearer is in it. If she were 
not too honest, I should suspect she had stolen it 
from some museum of antique costumes. Every 
word she said as we walked, and I stopped occa- 
sionally for a wild flower, reminded me of what 
they told us at Wellesley of the old Roman idea of 
religion — “ religio , a binding down, a constraint.” 
She wants to head me in, to shrink me and make 
less of me than there is now. All the breadth and 
( 16 ) 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


17 


bloom of my life must shrivel into the primness 
of a young prude. The sails and banners must 
be torn off in a tempest of remorse, and I must 
scud under bare poles for the rest of my life. 
Pleasant prospect ! Better be a great sinner than 
a great cipher. 

“ Don’t you see, Alice,” she said, “ that you’ve 
got to be emptied of yourself — to sing out of your 
heart, ‘ Oh to be nothing ’ ? This carnal pride and 
ambition of yours will be the ruin of you.” 

dSTo, I don’t see any such thing. Heaven knows 
there is little enough of me — though I do think I 
amount to something — as it is. And I’m not go- 
ing to dwindle down to the vanishing point. She 
talked about duty. I hate duty ! I don’t mean 
to go into a strait- jacket — unless she drives me 
crazy. I want my liberty — room for adventure 
and ambition, space to rise and soar. These tram- 
mels of duty are dry and fruitless as a peach tree 
in March. The drones along that humdrum way 
have never a new thought from January to De- 
cember. I don’t care to lead a canal-horse on a 
straight line because it is useful. I mean to me- 
ander into finer scenery. I suppose Jane Holt is 
a pattern of Mrs. Bentley’s ideal — afraid to breathe 
for fear of inhaling some malaria of evil, a ma- 
chine, turning out manufactured articles called 
duties, day in and out. I don’t propose to join 


18 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


the drove into which Mrs. Bentley invites me. 
Pegasus cannot be yoked to her cart. If I ever 
go through any such change as Doctor and Mrs. 
Bentley expect, I must first see myself as the mis- 
erable sinner that they think me. What right 
have they to put me in that herd ? Every one 
else is lauding me as a pattern of all the virtues. 
Why should not every one else be right ? They 
won’t catch this bird at present in their gospel 
net. I had rather be on the wing than in the 
church-cage. 

June 6. 

After I escaped from Mrs. Bentley, the other 
day, I came home across lots, through the meadow. 
How much pleasanter such a path is than the turn- 
pike ! I like it for one reason — as it shows so 
plainly that it was wanted. It was laid out not by 
the authorities, but by the feet that needed it — 
like many a sweet hymn or poem, born of a heart 
that must find way in that direction. I presume 
Mrs. Bentley thought, when I broke away from 
her, on the plea of haste and a short cut home, 
that I was going through By-Path Meadow, straight 
toward Giant Despair. If so, the way to destruc- 
tion was a charming one. It lies, for some distance, 
along the brook that wanders about like a lost 
child, seeking the sea from which it came, and 
seeming to murmur as not knowing which way to 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


19 


turn next. Just before I crossed the foot-bridge, 
1 sat down on a rock to watch a thrifty couple of 
robins at their nest, the wife doing her own work 
while her spouse gave strict attention to business, 
providing for the family. They seemed to have 
arrived late from the South and to have not been 
j long at housekeeping. Altogether it was a delight- 
ful walk. The air was an aromatic bath and every 
sight and sound had its separate charm. 

But, before I reached home, my halcyon mood 
was pretty thoroughly broken up. I fell in with 
Susie Wickham, who told me of Deacon Harrow’s 
docking the salaries of both his clerks, because, he 
said, there were lots of young men out of employ- 
ment, and the supply of labor was greater than the 
demand. He calls that doing business on business 
principles — not denying that the work of the 
clerks is worth as much to him as it was before. 
I call it the business of the tiger in the jungle or 
the shark in the sea. Doubtless the deacon is 
good in spots — or perhaps, in charity, I ought to 
say, bad in spots. Probably Mrs. Bentley would 
say this particular meanness is a fly in the oint- 
ment. I should call it a spider or a scorpion. 
She’d better see to him before besetting me. If 
he is a saint and I a sinner, would it hurt the 
town were the tribe of sinners to increase ? Ho 
one ever accused me of looking on a wage-worker 


20 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


as a cider-press might be imagined to look on an 
apple. 

I had scarcely parted from Susie at her father’s 
gate, when I encountered Deacon Harrow him- 
self. Susie said he had cut down the salaries only 
this morning, so I could safely assume ignorance of 
it. He came toward me in his stiff, nervous way, 
with the grace of a last year’s mullein-stalk bob- 
bing in the wind. His peremptory black eyes — I 
can hardly tell whether, they express a present im- 
periousness or the aggregate of former years of it 
— rouse in me some defiance. So, between this 
and the news I had just heard about him, I was 
decidedly in a state of mind. 

“ G-good evening, Miss Herbert,” he said, with 
a somewhat paternal air. “ I’m g-glad I met you. 
I understand th-that the Adams fam-family are in 
straits. And, as several of them are g-girls, I was 
hoping the young ladies of the S-sewing society 
could d-do something for them.” 

“ Yes,” I answered blandly, “ I trust we shall be 
able to help them. One of them told me her pay, 
at Miner & Shelden’s, had been reduced. She 
could hardly live on it before. I believe those 
men would squeeze out her life-blood to increase 
their profits. The unemployed must certainly 
have help.” 

The Deacon was silent. 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


21 


“ It is such a privilege,” I went on, “ that you 
business gentlemen have, to show your sympathy 
for those in your employ.” 

The Deacon hitched his position from one leg 
| to the other, and stammered : 

“ Y-yes. J-just so.” 

“ I am glad,” I continued, pitilessly, “ that there 
is so good a man among the officers of our church ; 
who exemplifies this tender interest to those in his 
service, and obeys the Scripture, 6 Bear ye one 
another’s burdens.’ I don’t mean to flatter you, 
but it must afford you great pleasure, does it not ? 
I sometimes wish I were in your place.” 

It was as good as a play, to see the old man 
writhe. He could endure it no longer, but, sud- 
denly remembering an errand, and bidding me 
good-evening, hurried away. As I watched his 
figure vanishing in the shadows, I fell to querying 
whether he suspected that I knew more than I 
acknowledged, and then, how many Christians like 
him it would take to make one such 4 light of the 
world ’ as Christ expected a follower of His to be. 
About as many as it would of fireflies to equal an 
electric burner. 

Yet the Deacon has his better qualities. Out 
of his store he is sympathetic and kind. He gives 
away a good deal of money — though, I am told, 
by the hardest. He is a pillar in the church. He 


22 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


has considerable public spirit. Sometime or other 
he may straighten out his distortions and become 
a model character. But he must work on himself 
a long while, before he will make much impres- 
sion on me. If Dr. Bentley should ever have his 
wish in regard to me, it would certainly not be in 
the regulation-way that he has marked out. 


IV. 


June 7. 

Poor Peggy Swift has met a sad misfortune. 
She broke her ankle yesterday, through a rotten 
plank on the bridge. And now, though she is the 
sole dependence of herself and her paralytic 
mother, she can do no work, the doctor says, for 
months to come. Yet, while she lies, with her 
face as bright and serene as the moon sailing out 
from behind a cloud, she preaches with closed lips 
the most eloquent sermon on patience I ever heard. 
Some money must be raised for her, and I must 
raise it. 

June 9. 

I have had good success. Peggy’s beautiful 
character, of which everybody knows, deserves the 
credit of it more than I. By what strange im- 
pulse was it that I asked the Saloonist, Semler, to 
give ? I had seen him going into and out of his 
store, and knew him by sight, but had never 
spoken to him ; and, when I met him in the 
street, had to introduce myself. Susie Wickham, 

( 23 ) 


24 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


who was with me, was astonished at my boldness. 

I hadn’t faith enough in him to expect anything 
but a rough refusal. In so harsh and stormy at- 
mosphere as that in which such men live, I as- 
sumed that he must have grown hard and churlish. 
But I have done him injustice. He is as cour- 
teous a man as I ever met. The explanation, I 
am told, is in his birth from a fine family. So his 
roots were in good soil, and his recent life is a sort 
of rough landslide over them. He was moved 
almost to tears as I told him of Peggy. He has 
feelings as soft as a child’s. Moreover, he seemed 
to fear I should take for granted that his business 
had debased him, and so thought this a good 
chance to assert his manhood. He pledged me 
twenty-five dollars! — more than any other sub- j 
scriber, thus far. I almost fell in love with him ! 

I wonder if these saloon-men are quite as bad, 
after all, as we are apt to think. A deed like this 
sets them in a pleasanter light. Could one do it 
who was altogether bad ? Their business seems 
to us dreadful, no doubt. But the conscience of 
many a one of them, falling among thieves in his 
childhood, was wounded and left half dead, and 
there was no Good Samaritan to revive it. [Others 
were forced into this because they could find 
nothing else to do. Perhaps we have dropped 
our Christian charity in judging them.] 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


25 


June 11. 

My rainbow bubble lias collapsed ! I don’t know 
that Semler will refuse to pay his pledge, but 
whether he does or not will signify little to me. 
Dr. Bentley may be prejudiced against him, but 
he has given me facts enough on which to make 
up a judgment for myself. Mrs. Cheseboro went 
to Semler, heart-broken, to beg him not to sell to 
her husband, and he brutally turned her out of 
doors. Mr. Daniels remonstrated with him in be- 
half of his son, whom Semler is ruining, and was 
told in reply that his son was a fool, and that he 
ought to have brought him up to control himself. 
So on through the dismal list. He must have had 
only a January thaw when I met him, and it is 
savage weather in him, none the less. Probably 
the sympathy he showed, for the moment, was a 
gush from the humanity that God has implanted 
deep, even in bad men, to keep them from turn- 
ing the world into a pandemonium. The credit 
for it seems to belong rather to Sender’s Maker 
than to Semler. All that the man himself has 
built with his own work on that foundation, I 
fear, is abominable. 

June 13. 

The more I learn, from others as well as Dr. 
Bentley, about Semler, the worse he appears. He 
is charged with “treating” the boys gratis, that 


26 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


they may make good customers ; and it chimes so 
well with his general character that I can easily 
believe it. His place reminds me of nothing so 
much as the cave in Victor Hugo’s story, and 
Semler lurks in it as the devil-fish, with his ten- 
tacula out, feeling after victims. 

But I have learned from him one tremendous 
lesson. He is a greater preacher than Dr. Bentley. 
He has given me an idea of sin, in these few days, 
such as I should not have gotten from the Doctor 
in years. Sin has seemed to me rather a light 
matter — a wrong sentiment to be corrected, an 
unfortunate bias, an abnormal growth in human 
nature. But Semler has shown me that it is 
deliberate and malignant as a viper, that it is piti- 
less as death, that it is (no weaker word will an- 
swer) a damnable spirit, at work in souls and in 
society. It makes me shudder to think of it. 
And so much the more because I am no spectator 
merely, but a partaker. There are confessions in 
this very diary that ought to have blistered like 
molten lava as they came up from within me to 
the surface. I was a child, babbling in words that 
meant more than I thought. God help me ! I 
begin to see what tawdry stuff was the purple and 
saffron robe of virtues I was wearing — a very shirt 
of Hessus it seems now, that was striking in with 
its venom to the heart. 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


27 


June 15. 

I had to-day a long talk with Marguerite. She 
would go farther to affect me than a dozen Deacon 
Harrows — perhaps I should add, Dr. Bentleys. 
There is more power in the pathetic tones of her 
voice than in the articulate words of most men. I 
have not appreciated her since she came into our 
service, a few weeks ago. I supposed she was an 
average German girl, more concerned for her 
wages and her right to evenings out, than about 
anything higher or finer. How little I knew her! 
And what glimpses she has given me into human 
nature ! Her story, in itseff, is interesting. I 
must set it down here before I forget it. 

She was, it seems, of patrician blood, though 
this carried with it very moderate fortune. Her 
father, a count in Thuringia, no more fairly ap- 
preciated his wife than have I this daughter. His 
coarse and burly nature bruised her sensibilities, 
even in his pleasantest moods, and his imperious 
will compelled her to self-sacrifices that were a 
perpetual crucifixion. With every taste and feel- 
ing lacerated, she was finally worn out, and died 
before her time. Marguerite, though she is modest 
in betraying the fact, which comes out indirectly, 
inherited the mother’s fineness of spiritual fibre. 
And the father, without intending, if even know- 
ing it, took her through a like torturing ordeal. 


28 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


A lumpish young descendant of some old land- 
grave, who had money, fell in love with her, and 
her father was as ready to sell her into a marriage 
that she abhorred as he would have been to barter 
off a heifer. She couldn’t make him understand | 
why she should think of objecting. Though she 
pleaded tearfully, he had just wit enough to per- 
ceive that there were strong roots under this sway- 
ing willow, and was angry at what he called her 
stubbornness. Unable to rise above the mercenary 
level himself, and supposing her as low-graded, 
he attempted to coerce her by the threat of expul- 
sion from her home. To his surprise, she took 
him at his word, and left to earn her own live- 
lihood, as a teacher of music, at Jena. There she 
met a young student of the university, and, on 
both sides, it was love at first sight. Though it 
was years ago, and little of what the world calls 
happiness resulted, and she has now emerged into I 
an experience with which he could have had little j 
in common, she cannot speak of him without a 
transfiguration of her fine features. As she at- 
tempts to describe him in her broken English, I 
can think of nothing but a master in music trying 
to render an exquisite score on an instrument 
shattered and unstrung. 

“ O Miss Alice ! ” she said to-day, “ he vas zo 
goot ! He voot die for me ! Dere vos not von 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


29 


zelfish hair in his dear head ! Dose eyes of his — 
dey did always— always — shwim in love ! And 
he vos zo — zo — deep ! I did look down into him 
yoost as I haf in die Switzerland, into von cre- 
vasse in die ice, tousand feet deep. O, he did zo 
vant and — and long to be all tings right and high ! 
He know not mooch about mine Savior. His 
fader vos a ateist and neffer tolt him about Yesus 
and heffen and oder such goot tings. But zome- 
liow I do beleef in mine zoul dat Yesus ha i found 
him, and, you know, He zaid, 4 1 am die Vay.’ 
My dear Yohann did do alvays die fery best he 
know how. Can anybody , Miss Alice, do better 
as dat ? He vos lots better as me, for in dem days 
I know not Yesus needer. Yohann did love 
flowers and birds and moosic and pictures and 
zomehow dere vos in him a — a — I haf no vort — ” 
4 A fineness of nature ? 5 I suggested. 44 Yes, tank 
you, dat is vot I mean. He seem not made of 
die zame clay mit oder folks. O how I did lof 
him ! — more as mine Gott, I am afraid ! ” 

Then the poor thing broke down in sobs and a 
freshet of tears that carried me with it. She was 
kneading when she began, but now turned away, 
lest the tears should fall into the trough, and sat 
down with her hands covered with flour. 

44 But,” she continued, 44 ven I haf had him for 
husband only tree year, he took sick. He haf 


30 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


vorked so hard, dat no rough vind or drop of I 
storm come on me, dat he vos vorn out and hat | 
not strengt of body to stant de zickness. Zo, day 
by day, he pine away. I hat no fader — he die and 
leaf no money — no moder, no frent but him and 
mine poor baby. O how black vos dem days ! 
Yohann say dere moost be von Gott, and he try to 
please Him. But ve bote grope about in die dark. 
Ye know not vy He let us suffer zo — vy Yohann 
moost be took avay from me and mine poor 
Yinifred ven she zo little. Ye yoost stant by dat 
great Zea of Eternity and shade our eyes (she 
suited the action to the word) and look out. But 
dere vos no light on die oder side. All vos dark 
as midnight. But mine dear Yohann — he zay — 

‘ If dere is any oder life, if, ven I get dere, I am 
able to lof you, darling, den sure I vitt, and vait 
till you and our little pet come too.’ He zay not 
mooch more. Die fefer go to his head and he out 
of his mind. Zoine days go by and he breet his 
last. Zome kind neighbors help about die funeral 
—and den I all alone in die cold vorlt. 

“After a while, dem goot ladies in die Deacon- 
ness’ House take care of Yinifred and I teach 
moosic. Den zomebody zay to me, ‘ Go to Amer- 
ica. Money plenty dere, goot prices for moosic.’ 

I get nuf togeder for mine passage, mit Yinifred, 
come to Hew York, den up here. But I knows 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


31 


zo little English, haf zo poor dotes, dat dey all 
take me for common vorkwoman. Zo I get no 
moosic scholars. I have to do house-vork for mine 
lifing. 

“ But I go to kirche — to church — and die 
preacher hold up die dear Christ, — O zo goot he 
doos it ! — dat it goes right to mine heart. Den 
comes anoder dreadful ting. Dear little Yinifred 
took sick and grew vorse and vorse, and I see she 
is going like her poor fader. Den someting in 
me rise right up against Gott. I say, ‘ Dis is too 
mooch ! Gott ! vy don’t you take zome poor beg- 
gar’s brat from de street, dat haf no moder to 
care for him, and leaf alone mine Yinifred \ ’ I 
vos mad at Him. I vood not go to die church. 
But, von efening, ven die lady I vorked for vos 
vatching by Yinifred, and I vos out, I happened 
to go by die church ven a missioner from die East 
vas talking. And I vent in and heard him tell 
about die shepherds in his country. He said dey 
feed dere sheeps and lambs on one zide die river 
— Tegrees, I tink — ” Tigris ? I asked. “ Yes, 
dat vos die name. Dey feed die sheeps till die 
grass on one zide all burnt up mit die zun, and 
no goot for die flock. Den die shepherd tries to 
coax dem ofer to die oder zide vare die land is 
higher, and die springs of vater keeps die grass 
green and goot. But die poor sheeps is afraid to 


32 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


go in die vater to vade ofer. He calls and sings to 
dem, but dey look at him and zay ba-a-a, and vill 
not stir von foot. Yot you. tink he do den ? Yy, 
he make in his robe von big — vot you call it ? — 
pocket, oder bag — in it room for two, tree little 
lambs. Den he put die lambs in dere, mit room 
for dere heads to look out, and zo he goes back- 
wards, vading tru die vater. Zo die lambs cry 
after dere moders. And ven die moders sees dem 
and hears dem, dey and all die flock goes after 
dem. Den, on die oder side die shepherd drops 
die lambs on die grass, and, in dem new fields, die 
sheeps and lambs all feed togedder. O 1 cannot 
tell you, Miss Alice, how dat come home to me ! 
Someding said to me — vos it mine goot angel ? — 

‘ Poor soul, don’t you see die Goot Shepherd tak- I 
ing your lamb, zo you vill follow to die goot land 
up yonder ? Zee you in how mooch love He is 
trying to lead you to Himself ? Give up your vill 
to His. Rebel no more. 5 

“ And I did give up. J vent back to mine dar- 
ling Yinif red, full of, O such peace in mine heart ! 
And ven dat dear child vent home, in die arms 
of her Zavior, I said, ‘ Efen so, Fader, for zo it 
zeemed goot in dy sight.’ And now, dough I 
am here alone, no fader, moder, husband, child, I 
cannot tell — no, not efen in Sherman efen, could 
1 tell — vot joy I haf in mine zoul efry day ! ” 


V. 


June 17 . 

Marguerite moved me more deeply even than 
Semler. I am but a child in these matters. But 
I believe I am learning by these two object-lessons, 
one repulsive and the other beautiful, as in a Kin- 
dergarten, The Master seems to be teaching me 
of sin through Semler, and of salvation through 
Marguerite. I fear Mrs. Bentley would shrug her 
shoulders at it, as not at all the regular path — this 
going for instruction to a rumseller and a servant- 
girl, instead of to her husband’s sermons. She 
might think me “ climbing up some other way.” 
But I certainly see farther into the soul of things 
than ever I did before. What a miserable pride 
was that of mine, against being drawn in with 
common sinners! A pretty figure you made of 
yourself, as I see you now, Miss Alice ! A very 
leper, clutching up her embroidered skirts to avoid 
defilement. 

And I am learning, too, that what I needed was 
not mere light in the head, but warmth in the 

( 33 ) 


34 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


heart. I see that the faith I want is not more 
knowledge, but a surrender of the heart and life. 
And how far will this be from contracting and 
heading me in, as I imagined ! I believe I can 
take up the words of the Koman officer in Mrs. 
Bailey’s drama of “ The Martyr 

“ One day and two blest nights, spent in acquiring 
Your heavenly lore, so powerful and sublime, 

O what an altered creature they have made me ! ” 

How this new principle of life expands and ex- 
alts a soul ! How inevitably it will make more of 
me than ever I have dreamed of becoming before ! 
How it broadens one’s horizon as he rises ! How 
it will lift my aims above the petty interests that 
shrank and belittled me ! I ought to be, and hope 
to be, as a poor, starveling orange or fig-tree trans- 
planted from our harsh climate to rich soil in the 
tropics. I begin to see the beauty, the glory, of 
an unselfish life. Why have I never discovered 
it before ? What a miserable mole, burrowing in 
the dark, I was ! 

And little I dreamed what self-denial is. I 
thought of it as a retrenchment, a mutilation. 
Yes — the retrenchment that the excision of a tu- 
mor is. The retrenchment of an athlete, training 
off his weight of adipose, that every ounce in him 
may be an ounce of strength. The retrenchment 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


35 


of an air-ship dropping the sand-bags — of a re- 
deemed soul dropping the flesh to soar heaven- 
ward. 

I shall have an object now, with which to draw 
out and put to service every power with which 
God has endowed me. 

“ Build thy great acts high and higher, 

Build them on the conquered sod, 

Where thy weakness first fell bleeding, 

And thy first prayer rose to God ! ” 

I feel like a lark soaring in a spring morning. 
O Thou Christ of God ! what art Thou not now 
to me ! What dust, what mist, are all things in 
comparison with Thee ! • I feel Thee insphering 
me, lifting me, inspiring me to be and do what 
never was or could be in myself alone. And into 
what companionship I am called, with the choicest 
spirits of all the ages, the very elite of the world ! 
What is “ our best society ” to them ? How grand 
the honor of a place among them ! I have been 
existing, hibernating, thus far ; but at last, thank 
Heaven, I shall begin to live. 

June 25. 

I am in deep waters. All the delightful experi- 
ence of these few days has graciously strengthened 
me for wading through them. Without that 
strength I verily believe I should have at heart 


36 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


fallen far before long. I have said nothing in 
this diary, thus far, I find, about George Vaughn. 
He seems to me as noble a soul as I ever met. 
He has immensely reinforced the conviction I 
have from Marguerite, that pure and lofty charac- 
ter is a reality on earth. And the delicacy of his 
whole nature, the fineness of his taste, the quick- 
ness of his sympathy, and, above all, the earnest- 
ness of his Christian aspirations, are what I have 
seen in no man I have ever met before. I am 
making a confession in writing this — a confession 
that I could make to no one but myself. Yet 
some sort of utterance I must find for it. There 
is a relief in formulating here into words what I 
could not whisper even to my mother. Tennyson 
utters my feeling : 

“ But for the unquiet heart and brain 
A use in measured language lies; 

The dull, mechanic exercise, 

Like dull narcotics, numbing pain.” 

There is a sacredness in this secret that makes me 
even tremble as I write. I think I must get a 
Yale lock for my desk. 

What right have I to imagine that Geo — Mr. 
Yaughn — ever thinks of me? Do all the words 
and looks and tones together, on which I have 
relied, if precipitated leave the least residuum ? 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


37 


There is a world of meaning behind every expres- 
sion of mine toward him. How much behind his 
toward me ? Is it mere friendship, or — the slight- 
est ripple over something deeper ? Tones and 
looks are counters, I must remember. They mean 
less or more, as the parties to the game agree in 
the outset. But alas! there is no agreement here! 
I am sure I am not flattered by conceit into my 
belief that he and I have much in common. I 
verily think he would find in me something that 
his nature requires. Am I presuming upon a rec- 
ognition of this, already, without a trace of out- 
ward evidence ? Or is there such a thing as a 
spiritual affinity that reveals itself not to the senses, 
but only to souls ? 

And how as to my dear friend Susie ? It needs 
no miraculous discerning of spirits to see her in- 
terest in him. She is too delicate, not to say diffi- 
dent, to betray it to any one not keenly on the 
alert. I could not expect her to even think of 
divulging it to me. But the look in her eyes, the 
flood and ebb of color in her face, when he is 
near, — she can no more hide it than a needle can 
hide its impulse toward the magnet. But does he 
reciprocate ? That they are not engaged is evi- 
dent enough. Are they approaching it? Has he 
given her intimations that are unknown to me? 
Love has a Freemasonry of its own. It has signs 


38 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


that the uninitiated never suspect. Am I, in 
every quick throb of my heart toward him, 
cruelly wronging her ? Am I treacherous to a 
friend whom I have so much reason to esteem ? 
What would she think, could she read these lines ? 

To surrender George (I must call him so here, 
though I would not dare, to his face, or to Susie) 
would seem to me like death. The loss of a great 
fortune would be nothing to it. For the fortune 
would be something lying around me. But this 
love for him has struck in. Its roots are entwined 
with my heart-strings. To tear it out would take 
with it a great share of the life within me. 

So I wander in a starless night. What is his 
feeling toward me or toward Susie, whether she, 
if either of us, first touched a responsive chord in 
him, — would that I knew ! But should I not 
dread to be told ? It is this ignorance, these 
doubts, that threaten my integrity. If I were 
sure that he loved Susie, my course would be 
clear — at whatever cost to me ; to say nothing of 
self-respect, I have conscience enough for that. 
But the force of motive that would then act solid- 
ly is frayed out by this uncertainty, and hardly 
acts at all. 

Could Susie fully respond to the deepest life of 
George ? Might he not feel her love to be “ a 
thing wherein there was some hidden want”? 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


39 


Ha ! How 1 hear in these questions the whisper 
of the tempter ! And then he comes again, asking 
if it is really the normal, natural order of things 
that they two should unite ? Would they not have 
a discovery to make ? Could they long be happy ? 
As a friend to both, and leaving myself out of 
the account, ought I to desire their union ? — Miss 
Alice! how conscientious you are! How con- 
siderate and jealous for them ! Do you think to 
hide yourself with this gauze ? Master, help me ! 
I am groping through a valley of darkness, on the 
narrow ridge, with the deep ditch on one side, the 
quag on the other, and the whispers of the wicked 
ones in my ears. I have a presentiment that this 
matter carries with it my whole destiny and all my 
interests for the future. When and where shall I 
see the light ? I am tempted to wish my con- 
science had not been so sensitized by this Chris- 
tian experience. Little trouble I should have had 
then from these scruples ! But along that line lie 
disaster and despair ! I thank Thee, Master, that, 
as the angel came to strengthen Thee, so hast 
Thou come to me. Were I knowingly to yield, in 
this matter, to what conscience forbids, I should 
feel myself as an outcast. The thought of Susie 
would haunt me forever. 

How the world would smile at all this, as a sen- 
timental little affair ! To what human soul could 


40 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


I disclose it, as it is to me, and hope for sym- 
pathy ? To none, the wide world over. What is 
it not worth to me now to carry it all to the 
Master ! This secret anguish is one that I could 
tell to no man standing visibly, face to face, before 
me. — I think not even to the Son of Man Him- 
self. But now I can pour it, all without embar- 
rassment, into His ear, and there is a wonderful 
uplift in the strength He affords ! I can do all 
things through Him. 

June 26. 

I have passed the crisis. I have come through 
it with a good conscience, and am in perfect peace 
on that score. But may God be merciful and 
uphold me, that it may not cost my life ! Mr. 
Yaughn and I — I dare not call him George again, 
even here — were walking on the street, where he 
overtook me on my way home from the post- 
office, when we passed Susie. She greeted us 
kindly, but a single glance from her eyes decided 
me forever. I cannot describe it. If it had been 
anger or envy or disdain, it would have been 
powerless. But it was as if cold steel, at the mo- 
ment, had gone to her heart. I had a like feeling 
myself. But at once — I believe with help from 
above — the whole moral strength within me rose 
to say, It is enough ! My choice is made. O how 
I longed to throw myself into her arms and tell 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


41 


her frankly all that was in my heart ! But the 
bitterness of this whole trial is that it has gone 
on beneath the surface — a worm at the core or a 
torturing tumor in the body. I could not stop to 
speak to Susie. There could be no explanation 
between us. To intimate that I knew of her in- 
terest in him would have only wounded her more 
deeply. I made an excuse to Mr. Vaughn for 
stopping on an errand at Mrs. Wilkin’s, by whose 
house we were passing, and was immensely re- 
lieved when, he had left me, to find she was not at 
home. It is simply dreadful to be suspected by 
Susie of treachery toward her, and remain silent 
under it. 

June 28. 

Another complication ! I am caught in a piti- 
less net of circumstances, and flutter and beat 
against the meshes and fall exhausted and helpless. 
Mr. Vaughn called last evening. He was evidently 
surprised and somewhat pained that I left him so 
suddenly just after meeting Susie. I think he 
suspected vaguely some connection between the 
two events. To my distress — I write in all truth- 
fulness — he was more tender that evening than I 
had seen him before. I could think of nothing 
but Betzsch’s outline of the celestial battle, where 
the angels only drop roses on the demons, but 
every rose, in falling, turns to a blistering flame 


42 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


of fire. He seemed anxious — though constrained 
by my manner — to intimate that lie had previously 
meant more than I had supposed. I sat like a 
home in winter — that is warm and aglow within, 
but hung with snow and icicles without. The 
duty was upon me, as I felt, to freeze him as 
toward me. Evidently he was grieved. If Susie 
had been mentioned I believe I should have broken 
down in tears. How can I endure this much 
longer ? How long will it last ? I made a stupid 
mistake, too, that involves me still farther. As 
he was leaving, in a mechanical way and from 
sheer force of habit, I asked him to call again. 
But, when his face brightened, and he answered, 
so eagerly, “ Thank you ! I shall be glad to,” I 
awoke to my folly. Had I let out unawares some 
breath of the warmth within ? What am I to do ? 

June 30. 

Mr. Yaughn has called again. Though he felt 
so far repelled as to say nothing definite, it is no 
longer possible to doubt his feeling. It thrills me 
with a delight that I cannot suppress — and a pang 
like that of a poisoned arrow. I am flung back 
and forth from one to the other, helplessly. 
While longing to rush into his arms— as I now 
know I could, with full welcome — I stand back 
as calmly as any prude. And the farther I with- 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


43 


draw the warmer grows his interest, as if fearful 
of losing his prize. Yet — the suspicious question 
haunts me — has he been untrue to Susie ? Noth- 
ing that I have ever seen in him, or heard of 
him, would justify the fear. But he has been to 
me as the moon to the earth — showing only one 
side. How do I know about the other ? It can 
hardly be that Susie is so devoted to him without 
having had something responsive. What can it 
all mean ? Iam trying to be true to her ; but the 
very endeavor, drawing him toward me, works 
treachery toward her. And, for her sake, I am 
cruelly wounding him to whom I would not for 
the world give a trace of annoyance. While I love 
them both sincerely, I am grieving them both to 
the heart. And I cannot explain to either. Dear 
Lord and Master ! there is no human help. I 
leave the cruel entanglement all to Thee. 

July 7. 

A dreadful thing has happened. Mr. and Mrs. 
Wickham and Susie were crossing the railway in 
their carryall. They were on the stone bridge and 
the express train was hidden from them around 
the curve. It had whistled only a moment before, 
but seemed farther away than it really was, and 
they made no allowance for its fearful speed. 
Their horse, too, balked for an instant, and the 


u 


BEYOND THE VEIL. ~ 


engine struck the rear of the carriage. The car- 
ryall was wrecked and all three thrown two or 
three rods away. None were killed, but Susie 
is severely injured. My first impulse, of course, 
was to run to her bedside ; but this horrid com- j 
plication holds me back. I might carry her pain ] 
instead of comfort. Besides, they are keeping her, l 
for the present, under opiates. The first thought 1 
— that this horrid affair may cut the Gordian j 
knot from around me — so shocks and shames me 1 
that I am trying to drive it out of mind. It adds j 
a sickening sense of guilt to the distress I was I 
bearing before. Is it an exhalation from a deeper j 
and viler bed of selfishness than I have supposed 
it possible for me to hold within ? God grant — j 
may He help me to say it sincerely — that, what- \ 
ever the result to me, the dear girl may recover ! j? 

July 8. 

Mr. Vaughn called again, last evening, and I 
have had another hour of confused, bewildering 1 
emotion. A light, however, at one point, fell on 
my path. In referring to the accident, he spoke I 
so as clearly to imply that he had only the interest 1 
in Susie that any neighbor might naturally feel. 
This was so plain and astonished me so much that 1 
I was suddenly betrayed, without thinking of all 
the bearings of the words, into saying : 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


45 


“ Why, Mr. Vaughn, I thought you had a more 
' personal interest than I should now infer.” 

He answered promptly and earnestly, somewhat 
hurt : 

“ Certainly not, Miss Herbert, I never had, 
though I highly esteem her. I am sure she 
would say I had never given the least reason for 
any such impression.” 

He seemed quite bent on assuring me of this, 
apparently hoping it would dissipate my coolness. 
Of course I believed him, and it greatly relieved 
me. But I am not so sure, as he appears to be, 
of what Susie would say. With her the wish may 
have been father to the thought. Though without 
tangible ground for her hope, she may have still 
hoped there was something of that spiritual affin- 
ity on which I was inclined to rely. 

July 10. 

It was the doctor’s opinion, after the first and 
somewhat hasty examination, that Susie’s injuries 
were not fatal. But 1 now hear that, if she should 
recover at all, which is doubtful, it could be only 
to become a confirmed invalid- The spine is in- 
jured. So, as I feared that the new and sad situ- 
ation should relieve me of any farther hesitation, 
and feared also, that she might misunderstand my 
neglect, I went to-day to see and, if possible, com- 


46 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


fort her. She has learned enough of the case to 
have dismissed all desire to live. The dear soul 
has long looked toward the other life, and felt the 
charm of it, as I never yet have. And in this 
apparent nearness of it, we both felt released from 
restraints and embarrassments, of the earth, earthy, 
that had held us before. I told her, when we were 
alone, and had talked, for a w T hile, in close confi- 
dence, that I must unbosom myself in regard to 
Mr. Yaughn. Not divulging, of course, what he 
had told me of his own attitude toward her, I as- 
sured her that I had refrained from any intrusion 
between her and him. 

“ I am glad to believe you, Alice,” she answered, 
turning toward me with a heaveidy smile, “ but 
do not, my dear friend, suppose me any farther 
troubled as to that. I cannot tell you how small 
a matter it appears to me now. I feel like a bird 
on the twig, with wings half spread for flight. 
The attraction of heaven so reaches down and 
around me, that my whole thought and interest 
have already launched away from earth. As Dr. 
Pay son said, ‘I am as a mote floating in the golden 
glory of a sunbeam.’ I could not have said, a few 
days ago, what I now say, most sincerely, that, if 
Mr. Yauglin and you are drawn together, I shall 
from my heart, congratulate you both. It is com- 
monly much harder to rejoice with them who do 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


47 


rejoice than to weep with them that weep. But 
I have reached the point where one is as easy as 
the other. From my soul I shall invoke a bless- 
ing on your union, and feel that it is I rather than 
you who should be envied.” 

1 gazed on the seraphic creature as she lay with 
face white as her pillow, yet with the heaven she 
was so assured of already appearing in her eyes. 
Though my thoughts, even since I entered on the 
new life, have been mainly of earth and the duties 
assigned me here, I began to feel, at least slightly 
as she does so fully, like a bird of passage when 
autumn calls it away to the land of sunshine and 
of flowers. As I kissed Susie good bye and left 
her, I felt that I was descending from a Mount of 
Transfiguration. 


VI. 


July 12. 

George called again, last evening. I am in such 
a flutter, even this morning, that I can liardlj man- 
age my pen. I could see, in his look, as he took 
his seat near me in the back parlor, what excite- 
ment of feeling there was within. His struggles 
to master it and put on a calm exterior, were really 
pathetic. But I had the sweet consciousness that 
I was the magician who had raised this storm, 
and that I alone could quell in. Dear Susie, 
though lying on the bed weak as a babe, had had 
the strength to throw off a ponderous load from 
me ; and I must have betrayed it to George in my 
looks, despite myself. It was an exquisite, moon- 
light evening, with a soul-like softness in all the 
air, and the ground tessellated with the shadows of 
the leaves. As we sat by the glass door, opening 
out on the veranda, it seemed to me that Nature, 
though we call her “mother” and “dame,” was as 
romantic as any young girl. 

He asked about Susie’s condition, and, without 
( 48 ) 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


49 


disclosing my conversation with her day before 
yesterday, I told him of her delightful anticipations 
of the other life. Naturally enough we drifted 
into a discussion of that subject, which, I find, is 
drawing more and more of my thought. The 
theme seemed to me to throw a sacredness into 
the love which, as we were both rapidly discover- 
ing, was mutual. I could almost see the Master 
laying a hand on the head of each of us. 

We had said, up to this point, nothing that any 
two young friends might not have said to each 
other. But I knew that his eyes , and felt that my 
own, were carrying on a colloquy, equally, with 
our lips. The sweet thought of that which our 
eyes conveyed pervaded all we said. Though our 
talk would not have been called a lovers’ commu- 
nion, it was like a delicate dish on the table, bear- 
ing one name but thoroughly flavored with an ex- 
tract that bears another. For myself, perhaps I 
enjoyed this state of suppressed love — with what I 
knew would be the issue — more than an open 
declaration. The stream swelled higher because 
of the obstruction. 

We kept up all the social formalities, without a 
word of endearment. It seemed to me as a young 
groom and bride in company, calling each other 
“Mr. Brown,” and “Mrs. Brown,” while both 
aglow, underneath, with their devotion. The very 


50 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


contrast between the surface and what lay below 
had a delicious charm for me. I half dreaded the 
denouement that, I knew, was sure to come. 

George, who is a passionate admirer of Lowell, 
repeated part of his exquisite “ Prayer,” when, at 
the lines, 

“ She hath her wings already; I 
Must burst this earth-shell, ere I fly. 


I cried, 

“ There ! that is just my crude idea of Susie, 
only alchemized into Lowell’s gold.” 

“Yes,” said George; “but, by the way, Miss 
Herbert, may I make bold to ask why you inti- 
mated that you supposed me specially interested 
in her ? ” 

Unwilling to tell what I knew of her interest 
in him, I said only : 

“ To tell you the truth, Mr. Yaughn, I thought I 
had seen looks and acts which pointed that way.” 

He gazed into my eyes as he asked : 

“ Is that the only reason you inquired ? ” 

“ Do you want a frank answer ? ” I said. 

“ Most certainly, if you can confide in me.” 

Trying to hide my excitement with quizzing, I 
asked : 

“What would you give to know?” But he 
was too earnest for banter, and answered, eagerly : 


BEYOND THE VEIL 


51 


“ I would give the world to know ! ” 

“ But it might involve me ,” I objected. 

“ So much the better! ” he cried. 

“ Well, then, seriously,” I said, “ I intimated it 
because I thought you were interested in me.” 

“And did you doubt me? Did you think it 
possible I could be playing a double part ? ” 

“ I was perplexed,” I confessed. “ I did not 
know you as well as I do now.” 

“ And why was that fearful coldness, even after 
you knew I had no thought of any other than 
yourself ? ” 

“ Ah ! ” I said, “ I must leave you to conjecture 
that.” 

After a moment, he cried : 

“ Now I see it ! All comes out ! You thought 
I might, perhaps, incline to Miss Wickham, and 
with your heroic self-sacrifice, you were determined 
not to be untrue to her ! ” 

I was silent. There was nothing I could say. 
He sat for a moment more, the tide rising higher 
and higher within him, till, with open arms, he 
cried : 

“ Alice ! ” 

I answered : “ George ! ” and we were one for 
life. 

I have set all this down here, because, I think 
it will, by and by, be interesting reading for him. 


52 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


July 13. 

I had a long, delightful talk with Susie, yester- 
day. Somehow she seems already half insphered 
in the other world, and looking in upon us as 
through a window from without. I said, however, 
nothing about the joy with which my heart is flut- 
tering since last evening. Notwithstanding her 
sweet words as to George and me, she must be 
more than human if our actual engagement would 
not give her, far down within, some slight tingle 
of pain. For her sake I shall not wear my ring 
for the present. George will understand it. 

But we soon fell into a discussion of the state 
just after death, to which she looks forward, as 
probably not far distant. I could not see why the 
other world is so darkly curtained in — why we are 
not allowed some glimpse between the folds of 
the veil. 

“Well, Alice,” she said, “one reason came to 
me, the other day. You know that father is 
guardian to little Clary Holmes, and that the child 
is heir to a large fortune. Now t , I w T as thoughtless 
enough, when the little fellow wtis wanting a new 
‘ Safety,’ to say : 

“ ‘ Clary, you know you will have money — ’ 
when I caught mother’s eyes staring at me, from 
behind him, in distress, with her Anger on her 
lips. 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


53 


“ Ah, yes, Susie ! ” I said, “ I see what you are 
coming to. If Clary knew what wealth is to be 
his, by and by, it would turn his little head, and 
whisk his thoughts away from his lessons and 
every other duty of the present.” 

“ Exactly so,” she replied, “ and I need not 
draw out the application to us who are allowed 
but little light on our heavenly inheritance. If 
the Veil were fully drawn aside and all the mag- 
nificence of heaven, with the enrapturing face 
of Jesus in the midst of it, were to burst on our 
sight, we should probably go though life like som- 
nambulists, absorbed in our visions and caring lit- 
tle for earthly affairs.” 

“Yes,” I said, “but it seems as if we might, 
without harm, be allowed to know something more 
than we do. When Julie passed away — you know 
she and I were twins, and she was as dear as life 
to me — it seemed as if she had been taken in 
through an open door from which the light flashed 
out for a moment, and then the door was closed 
against me, as I stood without in the dark.” 

“ Not quite so,” she replied, as she looked earn- 
estly into my face. “ If an angel were to come, 
offering to tell you three or four things that will 
be true of your future body, wouldn’t you gladly 
listen ? ” 

“ That I would ! ” I said. 


54 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


“ Well,” she rejoined, “ Paul does that.” 

“ Where ? How ? ” I asked. 

“ In the fifteenth chapter of First Corinthians. 
For one thing, your body will be pure in substance, 
and imperishable from disease or sin — raised in 
incorruption. For a second thing, it will be beau- 
tiful — raised in glory.” 

“ That’s a comfort,” I said, “ for a creature as 
homely as I ! But I’m afraid it would spoil the 
identity of poor, old Dorothy Sims ! We shouldn’t 
know her.” 

“ For a third thing,” continued Susie, laughing, 
“ it will be of great strength — raised in power. 
And, for a fourth thing, it will be transfused and 
all aglow with soul — raised a spiritual body. So it 
will be fitted, as an animal body cannot be, for the 
soul’s uses. How, is not all that something of a 
disclosure ? ” 

“ Yes, indeed,” I said. “But ‘as an animal body 
cannot be ’ — how dismally true that is ! My body 
was a drag on me this morning, when I wanted to 
catch a car, and couldn’t get the lumbersome thing 
along fast enough. I often wish I had two bodies, 
as an express-rider, in old times, used to tire out two 
or three horses in succession. It is sometimes as 
if I had a ball and chain at each ankle.” 

Just then 1 happened to put on my eye-glasses, 
to look at a bird outside the window. 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


55 


“ Yes,” said Susie, “ and you are showing now 
how the soul tills and overflows the body as it fails 
to meet her wants. Did you ever think how we 
piece out the body — the eye with spectacles and 
microscope and telescope, the voice and ear with 
the telephone, the hands with labor-saving machin- 
ery, the feet with locomotives and electric cars ? 
Even so, the soul cannot begin to find full accom- 
modation for itself in the body.” 

I could easily see that she was illustrating her 
theme, at the moment, in her own person. Her 
enthusiastic spirit, in the ardor of her speech, was 
overstraining her poor, broken and enfeebled 
frame. I laid my finger on her lips, told her she 
must talk no more, kissed her and came away, 
promising to call again soon. 


VII. 


July 17. 

Yesterday, Dr. Bentley preached on being wise 
beyond wbat is written. I was uncomfortable, 
anyway, before be read bis text. My new dress 
was tight under the arms — why can't Polly 
Meekam make a fit ? — and felt like a strait jacket. 
Then Harry, who stands in no awe of bis big sis- 
ter — mamma was ill and at borne — jumped about 
like a monkey in its cage, and I should have been 
uneasy enough if the sermon bad been the very 
balm of Gilead. But there was more gall than 
balm for me. The Doctor evidently felt called to 
put on the black cap and dispense judgment to us 
sinners. He may, however, have been aiming at 
the Spiritualists, who have just started a service 
that stands challenging our church from the ball 
across the w*ay. 

But he launched his bolts at any one who longs 
to look into other-world mysteries. Heaven knows, 
most of our people are safe enough from that ! 
Cannot he see that they are rather below such 

( 56 ) 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


57 


curiosity than on the level of it ? Moles are in no 
danger of blinding themselves, looking into the 
sun. How can any mortal, with brains in his 
head and a heart in his bosom, from whom a dear 
soul has gone into the upper glory, keep from 
gazing after him and wondering about his sur- 
roundings ? I hope our sweet, saintly Mrs. Bent- 
ley will be long spared to the Doctor. If she 
should not, he would never repeat that sermon. 

July 18. 

Last evening George (who, of course, comes every 
evening, with a day-call sandwiched in occasionally) 
and I had a delightful talk ; chiefly about the other 
life. On some subjects I feel as one walking nearly 
abreast of him. But as to this — he has given so 
much reading and thought to it — I am as a little 
child, tagging after one who leads him up hill. 

I referred to my talk with Susie, and spoke of 
my wonder that these bodies of ours need be such 
clogs on the soul. 

“ Perhaps,” he said, “ it was because God fore- 
saw that men would sin, and would need rather 
burdensome bodies, as Adam needed the curse on 
the soil, to keep them out of indolence and luxury 
and vice. I imagine that evil spirits are so ripe 
in iniquity, partly, because they are spirits, with 
no material bodies to hinder them.” 


58 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


“ You mean,” I said, “ that flesh and blood are 
brakes on the train for men who are on the down 
grade. But how with us who hope we are on the 
up grade ? ” 

“ Why, the adjustment,” he replied, “ must be 
made for those who would be the immense major- 
ity. In fact even we may need this check, more 
than we suppose.” 

“ Yes,” I said, “ but I seem to have a sort of 
divided personality, and never to be able to get 
myself wholly together. Up yonder, I hope, body 
and soul will be kneaded more thoroughly into 
one — will become homogeneous.” 

“ Just so,” answered George. “ I doubt whether 
we shall be conscious of having bodies at all. 
When you look to right or left, it does not occur 
to you that you are turning the pupils of your 
eyes. In that sense, I suppose, the spiritual body 
will be all eye.” 

“ Like the magical piece of carpet in the Ara- 
bian Nights,” I said, “ on which the owner took 
his seat, and presto ! was whisked miles away, to 
any point he wished. But matter is one thing, 
spirit another. How can they blend ? ” 

“Well,” he said, “flesh and blood, it is true, 
cannot inherit the kingdom. That may exclude 
matter of any sort. But do you know that matter 
and spirit cannot blend ? People as bright as you 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


59 


and I must be careful not to know too much. 
Scientists tell us that we know as little of the es- 
sential nature of matter as of that of spirit. We 
know only the properties of each. What if they 
should prove to be more nearly of one nature 
than we imagine ? ” 

“ You are diving in mystery so deep,” said I, 
“that I almost lose sight of you.” 

“Ho,’’ he laughed, “I am diving out of it — 
ignoring it. But, however all this may be, I be- 
lieve that, as to the body, whatever its substance, 
we shall be masters of the situation up yonder.” 

“I have sometimes thought,” I said, “that I 
should tire of so much bliss, through eternity. 
After a few centuries, I might want a little bit- 
ter to renew my relish for the sweet.” 

“ But,” he replied, “ do you remember why we 
tire of any one emotion long continued? It is 
due to the exhaustion of the nerve-force. But 
Isaac Taylor says we shall probably, in the spirit- 
ual body, know nothing of exhaustion — any more 
than here we tire of breathing.” 

I can find no words to tell what exquisite de- 
light high themes like these throw into our inter- 
views. I have often wondered how empty-headed 
young lovers contrive to enjoy themselves. Two 
souls coming together point-blank, with nothing 
to think of but ‘I love you ’ and 4 you love me,’ 


60 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


just living on each other — I should suppose the 
very intensity of their love would exhaust them. 
But, with a common and inspiring object for 
thought and aim in both, so that they meet, not 
point-blank but, on converging lines in that , — 
what a thrill in the communion ! 


July 22. 

I have made a change for Marguerite, which 
was an act of self-sacrifice that cut to the quick. 
Mother and I felt, almost from her first day with 
us, that she ought not to be in kitchen service. 
She has a keenness of perception and natural 
dexterity that make her invaluable to us. But to 
employ such a woman at such work is almost like 
setting Ole Bull at grinding a street-organ. That 
she has not repined or complained only makes it 
more of a grievance to our consciences, for it is 
another sign of the fineness of her nature. Though 
she nobly acts out the old distich in my school 
copy-book, 

“ Honor and shame from no condition rise ; 

Act well your part ; there all the honor lies,” 

that rather increases than relieves our mortifica- 
tion. I have seen persons in some such position, 
who, though esthetically fine, were morally so 
coarse as to chill my sympathy. But the fineness 
in Marguerite is more evenly distributed. 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


61 


The idea of asking people to take music-lessons 
of our servant-girl seemed at first so absurd that I 
was almost in despair. It would have been idle 
to argue for her. So we provided her a new dress, 
that her interior and exterior might be more in 
harmony, and made way for her to sing once or 
twice in the church choir. That settled the mat- 
ter. No one since has ventured to decry her. 
She has a class and is successful and grateful and 
happy. 

July 24. 

Susie has, in some way, heard of my engage- 
ment, and speaks of it, as I might have known 
she would, like an angel. It relieves me im- 
mensely to be able to believe that it costs her no 
effort to do so. She evidently feels no more de- 
pendent than an angel on the earth or its affairs. 
Without a particle of any selfish, other- world ab- 
sorption, and while constantly thoughtful for those 
around her, she lives in a perpetual vision of the 
life above, that overspreads her whole horizon. 
And this constant dwelling on — almost in — that 
life seems to open it to her and to increase the 
suggestiveness of her mind in regard to it. 

Referring, to-day, to First Corinthians, the thir- 
teenth chapter, eleventh verse, “ When I was a 
child, I spake as a child, I felt as a child, I 
thought as a child: now that I have become a 

o 


62 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


man, I liave put away childish things,” she 
said : 

“ I cannot help thinking of this as bearing on 
the variety of our occupations in the better life. 
Thomas Paine, you know, sneered at the Chris- 
tian heaven as ‘an eternal psalm-singing.’ But 
we seem to be here promised something else to 
engage us. When mother had the charge of our 
little Teddy, how narrow was the circle of his 
life ! She washed and dressed and fed and put 
him to sleep, and washed and dressed and fed and 
put him to sleep, day after day and week after 
week. Perhaps he never had a dozen thoughts 
in all his life. But, suppose he had lived to man- 
hood and become a merchant, or lawyer, an 
author or traveler to foreign lands! How im- 
mensely his range would have widened ! How 
vast the variety ! How, does not Paul hint at this 
in pointing us forward to the life beyond ? Some 
old minister said he should want to spend the first 
thousand years in gazing at his Saviour. A very 
pious thing to say, no doubt. But, however en- 
rapturing the vision of the Unveiled Face, he 
would not wish to do any such thing for ten cen- 
turies. An inborn, innocent instinct in us calls 
for variety of thought and change of occupation. 
In our imperfect state on earth, steady routine, 
as Dr. Bushnell well said, is needful to restrain us 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


63 


from vagary and wild adventure. But, when we 
escape from this go-cart of our infancy into the 
grand sweep of our ripened powers, we shall find, 
not less, but a thousandfold more, variety in that 
life above.” 

The dear creature, just like herself, is sewing, 
lying on her bed, to help the Ladies’ Benevolent 
Society, and gathers her Sunday-school class 
around her, as regularly as she ever did. 


VIII. 


July 27 . 

I have just come from the sick bed of Deacon 
Harrow. Soon after his fine stroke of business in 
cutting down the salaries of his clerks, he was at- 
tacked with typhoid fever. Probably, though he 
doesn’t know it, he is near his end. And his 
meek, patient, little wife, who does know it, has a 
very peculiar experience in managing him. While 
I was there, he took a fancy that he would like a 
piece of mince-pie, of which he is quite fond. 
Poor Mrs. Harrow was in dismay. 

“ Why, my dear husband,” she pleaded, “ Dr. 
Kane says I must be very careful about your diet. 
Mince-pie would, I am afraid, be the death of 
you. How, please let me get ready a nice little — ” 

“ Mince-pie or nothing ! ” roared the Deacon 
in a tone that filled the house — and he got his pie. 

Just as I was coming away, the nurse brought 
to him a dose of some soothing mixture, with 
which the doctor, who knew his man, was hoping 
to tame him into a nap. But the beverage is not 
to his taste. 

( 64 ) 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


65 


61 No ! ” he said, setting his teeth together, “ I 
don’t want it.” 

“ But, my dear sir,” she persisted, “ it is the 
doctor’s prescription. It will quiet your nerves, 
and give you rest. Now, please — ” bringing the 
spoon toward his lips. 

“ I tell you I won’t have it ! ” shouted her pa- 
tient — for sick as he is, that temper of his still 
gathers up every particle of vitality there is in 
him. Then, at the instant, he punctuated the sen- 
tence with a fling of his hand that upset the syrup 
over her white kerchief and ornamented the sheets 
with it liberally. 

The Deacon is, on the whole, after his fashion, 
a good man. He has, all his life, been making a 
fight — too often a losing one — against his wild pro- 
pensities. He said to Dr. Bentley, a few months 
ago — the Deacon is plain-spoken, — 

“ Doctor, I am naturally one of the meanest 
skinflints you ever knew. It hurts like the tooth- 
ache for me to give. So I wish you’d keep at me. 
Don’t let up. Every cent you get out of me is 
pure gain for the Lord.” 

Shortly before that, an agent for the Church 
Building Society called on him. The old 
gentleman, on account of his deafness, didn’t 
understand, at first, at what the man was aiming. 
When he did, the poor agent discovered that 


66 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


the Deacon was gunpowder and he himself a 
match. 

“ No, sir ! ” he bawled. “ No end to the calls! 
Tired to death with ’em ! A new one every day ! 
No use talking— sh a’ n’t do it ! ” 

The solicitor had never met such an explosion. 
It almost knocked him over backwards, and he 
retreated in dismay. But, the next day, the Dea- 
con, meeting him in the street, shambled up to 
him and snapped out : 

“ Mornin’, sir ! Bather rough I was with you 
yesterday. Take that ! ” Then thrusting a fifty- 
dollar bill into his hand, he made off before the 
agent could thank him. After his rather peculiar 
way, he is a good man. 

But the fact is, the Deacon is a victim of bad 
heredity. The worst enemy he meets on earth is 
his grandfather, who has been lying in the ceme- 
tery for thirty years. Some bad element, ricochet- 
ing down the lineage, struck this old party and 
then leaped over to the Deacon. There is great 
allowance to be made for him. 


September 2. 

Deacon Harrow has passed away. At the fu- 
neral Dr. Bentley commended him for his love of 
the church and of all good causes, and his Chris- 
tian life on the whole. It was no time or place 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


67 


for any qualification. Funeral sermons are eclec- 
tic. The speaker is not on the witness-stand, to 
tell “ the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but 
the truth,” with relatives and friends of the de- 
ceased sitting by. 

On the way home I walked with Mrs. Bentley. 
The Doctor had gone out to the cemetery. 

“Well,” she said, apparently drawing a long 
breath of relief, “ we all knew the faults of the 
good man. But he has escaped them now, and is 
perfect in holiness.” 

The remark set me thinking. As her words 
went down from my ears to the heart, they had to 
work their passage all the way. I made no special 
reply, but determined to talk it over with George, 
when he should come in the evening. And so I 
did. He had hardly got comfortably ensconced 
in the chair I always set for him, when I went 
at him on the subject. Quoting what Mrs. 
Bentley had said, I asked if he believed it — if, 
with a character as imperfect as that of the 
Deacon down to his last breath, it was probable 
that he had passed, instanter, into the perfection 
of an angel. 

“ No, my darling,” he said, with emphasis, “ I 
believe no such thing.” 

But, resolved to put him to his proofs, I asked : 

“ Does not the catechism say that saints at death 


68 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


are made perfect in holiness and do immediately 
pass into glory ? ” 

“ Yes,” said George, with a rather peculiar 
smile, “ that may be catechism ; but it is neither 
Bible nor reason.” 

“ But you don’t think the Deacon is lost ? ” I 
exclaimed. 

“ Certainly not,” he said. 

“ Then you leave him,” I suggested, “ in some 
kind of a condition between the lost and the 
saved ? ” 

“ Not that, either,” said George. “ But, so far 
as I can see, he carried into the redeemed life a 
good many of his strange characteristics.” 

“ But the Bible is against you ! ” I said, as I 
struck an ex cathedra attitude. 

“ Ah ! ” he replied, “ now you have said some- 
thing ! The catechism came from good men who 
had hardly got their heads out from mediaeval 
shadows. But, prove me wrong from the Bible, 
and I recant. Notice, however, please, that I 
speak not of what the good may become in the far 
future, but of what men like Deacon Harrow prob- 
ably are , just after their last breath.” 

“ Well,” I said, after looking over my ammuni- 
tion for a moment, “ doesn’t the Psalmist say (xvii. 
15 ), 1 I shall behold thy face in righteousness, I shall 
be satisfied when I awake with thy likeness ’ ? ” 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


69 


44 As to the first clause,” he answered, 44 good 
souls in this life are constantly called righteous. 
But they are a considerable stretch from perfec- 
tion. And as to the last clause — 4 with thy like- 
ness,’ it probably means 4 appearance * — when I 
awake with, or at, thine appearance.” 

“ Then,” I complained, 44 yon make the Bible a 
violin on which you can play any tune ? ” 

44 No, my dear girl,” he rejoined, 44 but a hand- 
organ, on which you can not play any tune.” 

44 Well, what of Jesus’ words to the dying thief, 
4 This day thou shalt be with me in paradise’?” 
(Luke xxiii. 43). 

44 They teach,” he replied, 44 that the poor crea- 
ture was going into a state of blessedness, but by 
no means of necessity into one of instant perfec- 
tion.” 

44 Then,” I asked, rallying and renewing the 
word-fight, 44 does not Paul say (Phil. i. 23) that 
to depart and be with Christ he esteemed very far 
better than remaining here ? ” 

44 Certainly,” said George, 44 but not that he ex- 
pected perfection, at once. It would be far better 
for a poor Chinaman, converted, to move from 
the edge of starvation in a slum of Peking to a 
Christian home of wealth and intelligence in one 
of our great cities. The new domicile might seem 
a heaven to him. But he would still discover 


70 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


faults to throw off, and virtues to gain. Doubt- 
less they make rapid spiritual progress, beyond 
the veil. Transplant a little orange-tree from its 
box in a conservatory here to the tropics, and you 
soon see the effect of the change. I suppose the 
life in paradise is a sort of moral tropics for the 
growth of character. Freed from all earthly care 
and weariness and sickness and temptation, we 
may make swift progress ; yet that is not instant 
perfection.” 

“ But there shall not enter into it anything 
unclean.” 

“ That,” replied George, “ seems clearly to re- 
fer to the condition of things following the grand 
consummation of our Christian Economy, far away 
in the distant ages — not to the state just after 
death. But I think we have discussed theology 
long enough, don’t you ? ” 

So we dropped the matter for the present. But 
I shall certainly probe him for his notions again, 
before long. 


IX. 


September 5. 

Called again, yesterday, to see Susie. The 
doctor says she shows more vitality than he ex- 
pected, and may live for a considerable time. I 
am struck with the change in the dear girl, as she 
enters the land of Beulah, on her pilgrimage. 
She was always much handsomer than I. When 
she looked over my shoulder, as I was standing by 
my mirror, I could not help feeling that I was 
nothing but the foil to a gem. But, if she was 
handsome then, I should call her beautiful now. 
A sculptor could have reproduced most of her 
comeliness before, but it would take a painter like 
Raphael with one of his Madonnas, to do it now. 
The whole inner life so richly suffuses the features, 
she is so lighted up from within, that it is an in- 
spiration only to sit and look into her eyes. 

And it is the more so because of the contrast 
with her poor, disfigured, wasted body. That, 
somehow, seems to succumb to the animal neces- 
sities of its weakness and helplessness, while, in 

( 71 ) 


72 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


the face, the soul appears triumphant. Yet, in 
another aspect, as I see how fully delivered she is, 
from all interest in the body, in either its enjoy- 
ments or wants or appetites, she seems already, 
in good part, a disembodied spirit. I never 
before thought of all this as a possibility. It 
is as if a throng of eager blessings had been 
following her, and, now that her busy life has 
halted, had overtaken and were crowding in 
upon her. 

Though she is so eager for release that her time 
goes slowly, the ripening of her spiritual life is 
swift. She has long been good, in the common 
sense of the word. She has had a sort of honest, 
robust conscientiousness. But that seems now 
only the raw material which is transforming itself 
to a higher, finer quality. The relations of it 
were largely earthly before; but are heavenly 
now. Breathing the atmosphere of heaven, as 
she does, seems to diffuse through her whole 
being some subtile, spiritual ether, as if she were 
soon to rise with it out of our sight. 

Yet she is no typical, regulation sort of saint. 
She has a lively interest in all that goes on around 
her, enjoys all cheerful talk and laughs, loudly as 
her strength will allow, like the rest of us. 

Nothing, however, is so interesting to her as 
the anticipation of the state to which she looks 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


73 


eagerly forward. I referred to Deacon Harrow, 
and to George’s notions, of the other night. 

“Well, she said, “why not? I don’t see how 
a man who has been so hard pushed by bad pro- 
pensities, as an engineer is pushed by the train 
when he nears an open bridge and would gladly 
stop, is to break the momentum in a moment, at 
his last breath, and become as perfect as was our 
Lord in Judea— do you ? ” 

Ho, I confessed, I did not. 

“ When I was visiting in Lawrence,” she con- 
tinued, “ I heard of a good deacon who was much 
given to thought on the other life. He had been 
educated at West Point. And on his deathbed, 
his wife overheard him whispering to himself : 

“ ‘ Another world ! — new scenes ! — a foreign lan- 
guage ! — other society ! — all strange ! — and yet an 
identity ! ’ 

“ He delighted to think he should see himself 
there as the same being that he was here. How, 
you and I know very well, as to many a Christian, 
that his habits of feeling and thought and affec- 
tion and, too often, desire, are so inwoven with 
his imperfection that it would take something 
more than an air-brake to stop the train of his 
life. And, if it could be done, it would almost 
jolt him out of his identity. He would be dazed 
and have to go groping about after himself over 


74 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


there. The old, Roman adage we used to hear at 
Wellesley — ‘ Qui trans mare currunt ccelum , non 
animum , mutant applies, I imagine, quite as well 
to them who cross that other ocean that we all 
must sail so soon.” 

Just then the bell rang, and Mrs. Bentley called. 
The good woman makes her rounds, especially to 
the sick, as regularly as her husband. She talks 
of “We who are in the ministry,” and perhaps 
with as good right as he to the rank and honor. 
She came in with a sober, compassionate face, as 
to a feeble sister with whom she was to condole. 
But the change in her look was amusing when 
Susie called out, rather lustily for her. 

“ Come in, my dear shepherdess ! Glad to see 
you ! I want you to hear some of my heresies. 
I believe you know already how much of a sceptic 
I am on the notion that, at death, we are all made 
at once perfect in holiness ; and why I think the 
Bible teaches no such thing. I was about saying 
to Alice that every science, astronomy, geology, 
biology, archaeology, history, shows that God has 
slowly developed the earth and man. Adam and 
Eve, as I read my Bible, were, even before they 
sinned, no such models of humanity as Milton 
makes them in Paradise Lost. They were naked 

* They who cross the sea change their region only, not 
their nature. 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


75 


without embarrassment, just as little children are 
now. With the whole garden except a single tree 
free to them, they fell, under the slightest tempta- 
tion, out of childish curiosity. The man loaded 
the woman with the burden of it, as uncivilized 
men do now. They thought they could hide from 
God behind a tree. They lived on raw fruits, ap- 
parently, and could make no better clothing than 
fig-leaf aprons.” 

“ But,” said Mrs. Bentley, as she saw to what 
Susie was coming, “ God could make us perfect 
at death. He could have made the world perfect 
from the start.” 

“ If he could,” replied Susie, u He hasn’t. 
Things, as Herbert Spencer says, were not put 
together carpenter-fashion. They have grown 
under the Lord’s hand. And if that has been the 
universal method of his operation, through the 
earth’s existence, does He conclude, at our death, 
that it is a mistake, and adopt a new one? Is 
there any proof that the other world is, any more 
than this, a world of miracles f Why should not 
the Lord develop character there, as He does all 
things, with few exceptions, here, through the nat- 
ural laws He has established ? Death' is no moral 
event — but only the putting off of one garment of 
the soul and putting on another. The greatest really 
moral event is conversion to Christ. And that that 


76 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


leaves a long course of growth in grace to be gone 
through, after it, we all know, to our sorrow\” 
Here her mother broke in, 

“ As to miracles, Susie,” she said, “ it would be 
one miracle if so long a talk should not thor- 
oughly use you up. So, with our friends’ leave, I 
will adjourn this meeting.” 

And she took us down into the parlor. 


X. 


September 8. 

After tlie Ladies’ Benevolent Society adjourned 
to-day Sybil Martin and I took a walk in the 
woods, over on Winsbury hill. Harry met us, 
coming home from school, and I took him along. 
He was sure there would be chestnuts there. I 
was sure there wouldn’t, for there has been no 
frost. But I didn’t tell him so. 

She is a queer character, Sybil ; and yet, for 
some reasons, I like her. She dresses horridly. 
Of harmony in colors she has no more idea than 
a goose. I sometimes wonder if she isn’t color- 
blind. Her bonnet looks as if it had been put on 
by the wind. She has big hands and feet, and, 
as if in scorn of the cowardice of hiding the fact, 
wears gloves and shoes both a number or too 
larger than she needs. My darling Susie’s fullness 
of nature seems to be evenly distributed all over 
her. She showed it, before that dreadful accident, 
as plainly in her exquisite taste in dress as in dis- 
cussing literature or art. But Sybil is a diamond 

( 77 ) 


78 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


half polished and half in the rough. I can’t un- 
derstand how a woman capable of such subtile 
thought and poetic fancies, and, often, graceful 
speech, can make such a guy of herself when she 
puts on her clothes. Even Harry, young as he 
is, and boy as he is, begins to see it, and sometimes 
puts me in dismay for fear she will see his grimaces 
at her. To-day he dropped a little behind her and, 
twitching my dress to make me look, mimicked 
her awkward gait and the pose of her bonnet till 
I almost burst in keeping down my laughter. But 
Sybil has a head full of ideas and is as unselfish as 
a fountain. 

It was a lovely afternoon. Everything appeared 
ripe, in the opening of autumn, and not yet mel- 
low. The brook stole along with so soft and win- 
ning a whisper, when we crossed the foot-bridge, 
that it seemed almost rude to leave it, and the 
squirrels winked a welcome as they stopped a mo- 
ment to look and then scampered away up among 
the foliage of the grand, solemn, old chestnuts. 

W e had not gone far before our talk drifted to- 
ward Deacon Harrow, about whom there had been 
much said at the Society. Sybil has, in some way, 
learned considerable as to that dreadful grand- 
father of his. It seems the connection was on the 
father’s side, and the Deacon’s mother had told 
him, in his childhood and after his father’s death, 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


79 

what sort of a character this ancestor was. Though 
the Deacon was too humble and honest to charge 
all his own unhappy temper to the dead man, he 
had, from his youth up, a sense of having suffered 
from him a cruel wrong. 

“ I was cursed,” Sybil says he was once heard 
to cry out, “ before I was born ! Why was this 
man allowed to hand down to me, in my very 
blood, a strange fire that I can fight but never 
quench ? Why couldn’t he see that he would be 
to his descendants the bitterest foe they would 
ever meet ? An attack from without you can 
ward off. But, when your enemy has gotten into 
you, what can you do ? ” 

I should judge, from Sybil’s account, that the 
old ancestor had gone on gathering up depravity, 
as he accumulated money, and then delivered over 
the mass of it, solidly, to his unhappy descendant. 

“ Now you know,” she said, after telling me all 
this, “ the Deacon was not converted till he was 
over fifty. His habits were all fixed. His dispo- 
sition was stereotyped. His views of things had 
become part of his inner life. All the tendrils of 
his nature had clung to the old objects so long that 
it seemed a mutilation of him to tear them off.” 

Just then, we caught sight of the windows of 
Squire Wither’s house, on which the evening sun 
was shining. 


80 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


“ There ! ” said she, pointing at them, 44 it 
would sometimes almost seem that the Deacon’s 
religion was more like the light on those windows 
than a fire within ! ” 

“ But you think he was, on the whole, a good 
man ? ” I asked, in some alarm. 

a Yes,” she said, 44 on the whole, I think he 
was. But, do you, know, I was a doubting 
Thomas, while Mrs. Bentley was telling our knot 
of ladies, over in the corner, in the Society, that 
he had already become perfect in holiness ? ” 
Evidently the pastor’s wife, being “ in the min- 
istry,” has been busying herself to keep heresy out 
of the flock. 

44 1 don’t see,” said Sybil, 44 how the Lord is to 
manage us as machines, after death. You can turn 
a steamboat which way you choose. Even with 
that, you must allow for momentum. You can- 
not veer in a trice. But men are made with free 
wills. If they are to remain moral and responsi- 
ble creatures, they must continue free forever. 
And a free being must be slowly changed, by in- 
fluences around him. He must act from within. 
It is impossible to make up a character and then 
thrust it into him. On the first of March, by the 
calendar, spring has arrived. But spring- weather 
is another matter. Though the winter-months 
have gone by, the old chill holds on for a while. 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


81 


The earth is too cold to be struck through in a 
moment with the new warmth and balm. May 
it not naturally be so in passing through the tran- 
sition from our wintry life to the eternal spring ? 
May not death be our first of March ? ” 

“ But,” I asked, as we took seats on a rock, 
“ does not this rather degrade the other life — this 
admitting the idea of anything less than perfection 
at once ? ” 

“ Why, no,” said Sybil, “it never struck me 
so. The ultimate state of perfection, at which we 
arrive, is, in any event, the same. The question 
is only whether we arrive at it by a perpendicular, 
and what seems to me an impossible, ascent, or, 
more naturally, and as character develops here on 
earth, by progress up an inclined plane. Besides, 
the common notion cuts us off from the sympathy 
of departed friends. I heard, in Colorado, last 
summer, of what they call a u fault ” in a mine. 
The vein runs along horizontally for a while, and 
then suddenly stops. The miner is wholly at a 
loss. He must dig and blast, here and there, till, 
perhaps ten feet higher, he finds the vein again 
running on at the upper level. Some subter- 
ranean explosion, centuries ago, broke the con- 
nection and threw it up. How, the common no- 
tion makes death such an upheaval, throwing a 
friend far away out of connection with us here 


82 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


below. He would have, of course, immense ad- 
vantage, anyway, in his freedom from earthly care 
and temptation. But how far could he sympathize 
with us in our struggles ? Are we not always 
saying that a genuine, thorough fellow-feeling for 
the poor is impossible in the rich ? But, if our 
departed friends are striving toward perfection in 
a common effort with us, how much nearer and 
dearer will they be to us in sympathy ! People 
ask, in perplexity, how they can know of our 
sins and sorrows and yet be perfect in happiness. 
What if it should prove that they are not yet per- 
fect in happiness ; but only, by a natural progress, 
approaching it ? We put them too far away from 
us in some seventh heaven of sublime and awful 
holiness, above all interest in our affairs. I knew 
of a sea captain, once, who was telling a story to a 
little knot of friends, when he was suddenly called 
away to his vessel. And, years afterward, as he and 
the same persons happened to be together again, he 
took up the story where he had dropped it, w T itli, 
4 Well, friends, as I was saying — 5 and went on to 
finish it. May there not be some such reunions, 
beyond the veil, of those who were separated 
here ? May not many a dying believer’s sigh, 
like a lark soaring into sunlight, end, up yonder 
in a hallelujah ? But it is growing too late for 
us to be out here longer in the woods.” 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


83 


And so we strolled homeward, listening to a 
whippoorwill from across the meadow, and watch- 
ing the sun as he winked at us with his last 
ray, bidding us good-night and taking his de- 
parture. 


XI. 


September 11. 

George called last evening, and is growing eager 
for the wedding-day. I hardly know whether I 
feel just as the dear fellow does about it or not. 
Of course I should be in an agony if I did not 
expect it sometime in the near future ; but this 
state of engagement is so delightful that I have 
an interrogation -point fluttering about in me, like 
a bird in the cage, as to whether married life could 
possibly be as happy as this. We meet now on 
something like terms of equality. We are too 
high contracting powers ; as when a little nation 
makes a treaty with one twenty times as large. 
But if it becomes annexed , alas for its insignif- 
icance ! I can easily see that, if this entry were 
read by any one but me, it would be misunder- 
stood. It would look as if I were not more than 
half in love. Now, I shouldn’t halt, for an in- 
stant, at the promise to 6 love, honor and obey.’ 
It would be a perfect joy, I am sure, to do all 
three. But George’s personality seems so im- 
( 84 ) 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


85 


mensely larger than mine, — I’m afraid that, after 
taking me in, he would be hardly able to find me. 
He tastes me now only at intervals, and there is 
enough of me, he thinks, to suffice. But what if 
he had me continually \ Might he not feel that 
he was drinking me dry ? Yet, on the other hand, 
I often long to be so delightfully insphered. The 
surroundings would be charming, and certainly 
salubrious ! 

But how as to the exquisite romance of the life 
we are living now ? Might not the effervescence 
subside into a rather flat residuum ? I have been 
wishing lately that I could gather up all the subtle 
charm of these days, every one of which is a 
prose poem, these moonlight nights in which our 
love seems to pervade all the air — that I could 
somehow distil all this into an essence with which 
to flavor those days of homely duty that must fol- 
low marriage. I find a sort of charm in this sus- 
pended state in which I am neither a wife nor 
single, that I certainly did not find before I en- 
tered it and may lose when I leave it. There is 
all the fascination of romance floating over a 
sterling reality. Everything has a weird charm 
thrown over it as if seen by moonlight or through 
a golden haze. 

But, after all, and on the whole, I am delighted 
with the thought of being lost in George. We 


86 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


are two drops that have not jet blended, and mar- 
riage is the touch that will absorb us both into 
one, rounded, symmetric life. 

Then, as to the wedding, whenever it comes — 
how many invitations ? How much of an affair 
shall we make it ? Papa and mamma want a little 
army of people and the whole house turned into 
a kind of festival hall. They say I am the only 
daughter, and, if they must surrender me, they 
want to give me “ a good send off.” But I would 
rather not strike twelve at first. For George (who 
laughs and kisses me, and says, so he gets me, he 
doesn’t care how) this grand entree into mar- 
ried life would be just in keeping, lie has a 
royal nature, entitled to royal nuptials. But I — 
I should have almost a superstitious fear of some 
Hemesis following the grand show. So far as it 
was for me, I should be haunted by a feeling that 
I was costing more than I was worth, and mount- 
ing a stage where I should be stage-struck and 
unfit for my part. Somewhere I have read of 
rich Jews, in the East, dreading the tax gatherer, 
who have low, mean doorways through their front 
walls, on the street, to hide the splendor within. 
I am not sure but I should like to enter on 
my rich life of joy through some such modest 
portal. But, as papa and mamma do not give 
me away until the ceremony, I suppose they 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


87 


may, up to that point, do with me as they 
choose. 

As we were talking of love, last evening, George 
referred to those great, deep words of Paul, “ love 
never faileth.” 

“ How wonderful it seems,” he said, “ that we 
can take this principle of love to God and man, 
which is the sum of all duty, and then know that 
our plan of life is made up for all eternity ! I 
was reading, the other day, President Edwards’ 
Resolution, “ Resolved to do whatsoever I think to 
be most to God’s glory and my own good, profit 
and pleasure, on the whole, without any consider- 
ation of the time , whether now or never so many 
myriads of ages henceP So, you see, he took the 
endless ages into possession, as we do our to- 
morrow. He saw that they all belonged to him, 
as an heir of God and a joint-heir with Christ. 
He laid out his roadway straight through the veil, 
onward and upward into the great hereafter. I 
call that sublime engineering! While one man 
pants for fame, another drudges for gold, another 
wallows in pleasure, — or perhaps the same man 
does all three successively, whiffling about — a 
Christian holds right on, unswerving forever. 
God has entered into him, with something of his 
own, eternal immutability! I was reminded of 
it, years ago while in college. A schooner came 


88 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


down the river, with a fair wind, toward the 
bridge. The keeper swung the draw in ample 
season, and, under full headway, without swerv- 
ing a point from her bearing, she glided through 
into the broad, deep Sound, and the ocean beyond. 
Death is no more to a Christian than was the 
open draw to that vessel.” 

“ But,” I said, “you make the transition so small 
a matter that heaven itself, as •hjplace, seems hardly 
to amount to much. The Master certainly said, 
‘ I go to prepare a place for you.’ When we 
children got 'into the museum, the rooms, with all 
their contents, were such a vision of wonders that 
merely being there made us all about equally hap- 
py. Now, don’t you suppose the spiritual body 
will have its five senses — or, as Isaac Taylor says, 
perhaps fifty ? And may there not be a surge in 
upon the soul of such external delights as will 
submerge any internal annoyances ? ” 

“ Please remember, darling,” he replied, “ that, 
in all I have said, I refer to the outset of the other 
life. What changes ultimately there may be, I 
don’t pretend to guess. But this traditional no- 
tion of happiness due to the place is certainly an 
immature one. Men of no spiritual insight here 
on earth look for their enjoyment from something 
around them — from riches, pleasures, fame, or 
whatever. They expect to take in happiness, as 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


89 


they do health in going to the mountains or the 
springs. They are slow to see that any genuine, 
lasting joy must be from within, — from the spir- 
itual health that one carries in him. Now this 
last fact will certainly be the all-absorbing fact as 
we emerge from death to the life above.” 

“ But no outward magnificence ? ” I asked. 

“Yes, doubtless,” he replied, “ transcendency 
such. We are in our Father’s universe. As his 
children we are heirs of the universe. It is as fit 
that righteousness should come to glory as that 
the vegetable life in a rose should come to beauty. 

“ But the chief joy of the redeemed, pervading, 
exalting, inspiring all other, will be that of Christ- 
like character. And it is against the eternal laws 
of moral order that two persons, dying with char- 
acters of such different grades as those of Deacon 
Harrow and of Susie Wickham, should enjoy, 
from the very first, the same reward. The Bible 
shows us better. Peter (2 P. i. 11), declares that 
whoever gives diligence to make his calling sure, 
whoever is in earnest, with his whole soul, for the 
Master, shall have an entrance ministered unto 
him abundantly into the everlasting kingdom. 
As Bunyan has it, all the bells of heaven ring for 
the pilgrim entering the pearly gate. The angels 
seem to flock around him in a welcome that is a 
perfect ovation for his triumph over sin. But 


90 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


there comes, after him, another, of whom Paul 
speaks (1 Cor. iii. 12-15) — a very different speci- 
men of disci pleship. He has built, it is true, on 
the right foundation. There is some genuineness 
in him. But, instead of building with gold, silver 
and precious stones, he has tumbled on wood, hay 
and stubble, — in other words, a miserably incon- 
sistent life. Where there ought to be a palace, there 
is a hovel, a shanty. He has yielded to evil so 
often that his will is flaccid. While he should 
have the tough moral fibre of a man ripe in the 
new life, he is hardly out of the gristle. Men 
who ought to be compelled to revere him make 
merry over him. His brethren look at him, and 
then one at another in confusion. 

“Now, how does Paul bring him out? When 
the stern ordeal comes, his wood, hay, and stubble 
hovel, that ought to have been a fire-proof build- 
ing, is burned to ashes. He is “ saved,” but as 
“ through fire.” He is, as it were, awakened at 
night by the blaze in his poor rookery of a charac- 
ter, and flees for his life, leaving everything be- 
hind. He barely escapes into paradise. An 
abundant entrance for him ? No ! indeed. Enough 
that he is saved at all, a brand plucked from the 
burning. As Evangelist gave the pilgrim “ a 
pull,” when he entered the Wicket Gate, to save 
him from the arrows of the demons, so must the 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


91 


angels, I fancy, pull this poor weakling in, lest his 
passions should, at the last, waylay him. 

“ Now these are two inspired accounts, by Peter 
and Paul, of the way in which different Christians 
pass through death. And we need no omniscience 
to see that they do not start abreast on their eter- 
nal careers. Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall 
he also reap. We absurdly apply this only to the 
distinction between the righteous and the repro- 
bates. We say that, if one man sows wheat and 
another darnel, one shall reap wheat and the other 
darnel. Put how if both sow wheat, yet of widely 
different qualities? Are they both to reap the 
first and the best ? The balances of eternal jus- 
tice are no coal-scales, roughly dealing only with 
cargoes and car-loads. They are as a banker’s 
gold-scales, that discriminate to the weight of a 
hair.” 

Then he began to talk of the wedding — a decid- 
edly favorite theme with him of late. We are 
coming to more definite plans for it. But I am 
sleepy to-night, and can write no more. 

September 14. 

Discussed with George, last evening, the whole 
matter of the wedding. We fixed on October 
15th. It is to be at the house. I hardly meant 
to mention the affair to Susie at all. Of course 


92 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


she will know of it. But I am so completely ab- 
sorbed in it, and, through it, in earthly conditions, 
that it is hard for me, even after all my intimacy 
with Susie, to see how she can avoid a somewhat 
jealous view of the whole matter. And, as I did 
not suppose it conceivable that she could be pres- 
ent, I meant to refer to it, when at her house, as 
little as possible. But the dear girl, whose mind 
seems almost preternaturally clear and sharp as 
she nears the everlasting light, has evidently sus- 
pected all this. She is so exalted, so heavenly, as 
to look down on our engagement, vertically, as it 
were, from above, rather than laterally. Without 
being invited, she has told me that she is coming 
to the wedding ! She has actually arranged to be 
brought over and placed in a reclining-chair, that 
she may look directly on, as her George (so she 
had hoped to call him) pledges his faith to anoth- 
er. I can hardly, even yet, escape a twinge of 
remorse, as I think of her in connection with 
George. But her evidently profound sincerity 
in declaring that she shall heartily enjoy the occa- 
sion both gives me immense relief and shows how 
sublimely she is lifted into the heavenly sphere. 
Shall I ever, in this life, reach her height ? I re- 
vere her. I almost worship her. 

I descend so far in passing from Susie to the 
pretty details of the wedding, that the fall bruises 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


93 


my feeling. But it is sweet to think of reading, 
by and by, the matters I am here to note — perhaps 
with George looking over my shoulder. 

A year ago I should have thought such ques- 
tions as that whether Dr. Bentley or we should 
face the company, during the ceremony, too petty 
for a moment’s thought. But, as I approach the 
great event, it throws something of its own impor- 
tance into every detail. It seems to focus all its 
great significance, like a huge search-light, on each 
little feature of the whole, bringing it out with a 
new meaning. If we should stand with our backs 
to the company, would it be respectful ? Or, 
would it mean that, joining hands and forsaking 
all others, we go out into the future alone \ If we 
should face the company, would it mean that, see- 
ing them as representing the world, we proposed 
to confront it, one in heart ? We have postponed 
this great question for after consideration. 

Then, shall we have a bell of flowers, or a white 
dove suspended over us ? As love is better than 
mere gladness, we have chosen the dove. 

George wants me dressed entirely in white. 
The poor deluded soul thinks it typifies the con- 
dition within. Would that it did ! How glorious 
is the hope set before us that sometime it will ! 
But I shall gratify him, at least as to my exterior. 
The dress will be of white tulle, the veil white 


94 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


lace, and my shoes white. A single white rose 
will be in iny hair, and I shall have none but 
white ones in my bouquet. I should like to have 
Sybil Martin for one of the bridesmaids, but real- 
ly dare not. She would, with all her excellence, 
be so sure to torment me with some lioirid gauch- 
erie in dress or manner or both, that I must se- 
lect bridesmaids, as I am half afraid that George 
does the bride (for he is infatuated enough to 
think me handsome) with large reference to exter- 
nals. As for George, if Cupid is not blind, there 
is certainly something the matter with his eyes. 

Mother says we must go into the city for the 
dress. Polly Meekham means well, but is hardly 
adequate to the occasion. I am sorry, for I know 
it will try her. Polly is rather an artisan than an 
artist. So large a part of the trousseau can be 
bought ready-made that this will greatly relieve 
the fuss of getting it all together, 

George thinks he will have, as groomsmen, two 
Yale classmates of his, Frank Washburn and 
Philip Livingstone. I shall take for bridesmaids, 
my two Wellesley classmates, Bessie Winchester 
and Anne Morgan. 


XII. 

September 14. 

Sybil and I bad a charming row on our small 
river yesterday. As she has the daintiest little 
cedar shel 1 , just large enough for two, and spends 
no little time on the stream, she is glad of com- 
pany. And water, in any shape or quantity, has a 
chasm for me. Ever since I heard lectures on it at 
college, as one of the elements of nature, I have 
looked at it with a fresh interest. That it should 
be so hard in its inelasticity as not to be compress- 
ible by any force, yet so soft as to yield to the 
touch as quickly as air, seems wonderful. Then, 
that a stream, if defiled, runs itself clear, in a few 
miles, is a great moral lesson for us. And, to my 
fancy, no landscape is perfect without water. It is 
not representative of this terraqueous globe of ours. 

Sybil’s oars, muffled with their leathern shields, 
worked so silently that they seemed listening for 
us to talk. As we glided noiselessly between the 
banks there was nothing wanting but — George, to 
fill up the pleasure of the hour. 


( 95 ) 


96 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


Sybil Las been reading every book about tlie 
other life that she could lay her hands on. “ The 
Physical Theory of Another Life,” a Philosophy 
of a Future State,” “ Gates Ajar,” “ Between the 
Gates,” “ Beyond the Gates,” “ Heaven Reveal- 
ed,” “ The Unseen Universe,” the “ Awakening,” 
“ The Little Pilgrim in the Unseen ” — she has de- 
voured them all, with a score of others I do not 
remember. Dr. Bentley’s sermon against being 
wise beyond what is written was evidently lost on 
her. She reminds me of a child on the steamer- 
wharf, in May, when tourists are embarking for 
Europe, who longs to be among them. 

“ I heard, the other day,” she said, “ a pleasant 
story about a minister whom his people had sent 
abroad for a rest. It occurred to them afterward 
that his wife ought to be with him. So, without 
notifying her husband, they made up another 
purse for her and put her in charge of a member 
of the church who was going over on business. 
He found the pastor’s hotel in Paris and took her 
there, thickly veiled. From the clerk he learned 
the location of her husband’s room, and that he 
was there. Then, going up with her, he left her 
standing in the corridor, while he greeted his min- 
ister and after a few minutes’ chat with him, said : 

“ ‘ I have a lady-friend here, one of our church, 
whom you will be glad to see.’ ” 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


97 


“ Upon which, without explaining why he took 
her to this private room, he went out, brought 
her to the threshold, and closed the door, from 
without, just as she stepped in and lifted her veil. 
Imagine the meeting ! Now, somewhat so I think 
of the recognitions and congratulations of those 
who pass to the life above and meet friends who 
have gone before.” 

“ Then,” I said, wanting to draw her out, “you 
believe in such recognitions ? ” 

“ Believe ? ” she replied ; “ a doubt strikes me 
as the most preposterous of all things. The whole 
matter was summed up by that Scotch minister 
whose wife asked him : 

“ ‘ John, do you think we shall know each other 
in heaven ? 9 

“ ‘ To be sure, my dear. Do you think we shall 
be greater fools there than here ? ’ 

“ If we are immortal at all,” Sybil continued, 
“ I take it as pretty clear that we must carry with 
us, over there, our memories, with the other facul- 
ties. I suppose the main point, in our having, in 
any sense, the same body as here, is that of con- 
tinued identity , — that we may be always and 
everywhere recognized as the same persons that 
we were here. Paul says (2 Cor. v. 1) that, if our 
earthly house of this tabernacle be dissolved, we 
have a building of God, a house not made with 


98 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


hands, eternal in the heavens. We pass at once, 
from the one outward form into the other. Or, 
as some think, the soul may be endowed with the 
power of developing from within itself, its new 
frame. And, with our identity so preserved, what 
more absurd than that a man should meet there a 
wife, for instance, with whom he had lived for 
twenty years, and not know her ? Paul certainly ex- 
pected to know his converts. That we may present 
every man perfect in Christ, he says (Coloss. i. 28), 
‘ clearly,’ adds Dean Alford, ‘at the great day of His 
appearing And if Paul should recognize them, 
why may not others know their friends, as well ? ” 
“ Most people seem to imagine that death is so 
fearful a shock as to break our whole being into 
fragments which we afterward gather up as we 
can. I see no necessity of any such demolition 
and reconstruction. I think we may expect to 
make ourselves at home very speedily in our new 
house. While I was in college, father and mother 
moved, with the family, from Winchester over to 
Dedham. I knew nothing of the new home, ex- 
cept that they were there. But I was not long, 
after I arrived and had them all around me, in 
getting domiciled. Why should I be any more so 
in one of the many mansions into which Jesus 
moved to prepare a place for me, and where I 
have already so many friends ? ” 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


99 


Up to this point Sybil bad rowed, while I 
steered. She seemed to suppose I couldn’t row. 
But, partly to show her that I could feather a 
blade, as well as she, and partly to leave her whol- 
ly at ease to talk,— I so enjoyed what she had to 
say, — I insisted on exchanging places with her. 
We could pass each other in the toppling little 
craft only by running her ashore and pushing off 
again. For some little time after, neither of us 
said much. The slumberous stillness of the water 
and the woods, with no sound beyond that of a 
tree-toad or of the plunge of a frog in among the 
lily- pods, disposed us both to silent thought. I 
had in mind another recognition than that Sybil 
had mentioned — of the Master Himself. He has 
seemed to me, of late, so dear and intimate a 
confidant that it will be, by and by, a double joy 
to see Him enthroned in His majesty. It remind- 
ed me of Moore’s “ Lalla Rookh,” that I had read 
some years ago. The princess, betrothed to the 
young King and journeying to his court, has with 
her a charming youth, a poet, to beguile the te- 
dium of the way. He entertains her so delight- 
fully and proves so congenial that she falls in love 
with him and dreads to meet her fiance. The 
poor creature is distressed beyond measure. But, 
when, at length, she reaches the royal court, and 
the young King comes out to meet and greet her, 


100 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


she is in ecstasy to find that he is the poet who, in- 
cognito, had been attending her and winning her 
heart. May I hope to see my Lord, who has at- 
tended me so lovingly along the way to his court, 
in some such wonderful recognition ? 

I broke from this reverie, which had lasted but 
a few minutes, to ask Sybil how she made the 
special friendships in the life above, that she had 
referred to, consist with a perfect love to all. 

“ Oh,” she said, “ that is easy enough. Indeed 
you and I know it has been already done. There 
was, once in history, a certain sphere or circle, 
within which reigned the absolute perfection of 
heaven. It was, so to speak a fragment of that 
perfection, torn off and floated down to the earth. 
In all the ages there has been nothing like it. 
Among the angels, around the Throne, there is 
nothing freer from any shadow of a taint. John’s 
prediction of the Golden City, ‘ There shall in no 
wise enter into it anything that defileth,’ was here 
fulfilled on earth. Of course, I mean the life of 
Jesus. He alone, of all the millions of mankind, 
could demand of bitter critics, 4 Which of you 
convinceth Me of sin ’ ? How, with all this per- 
fection, He had His special friends. Peter, James, 
and John He favored repeatedly by taking them 
where He invited none of their brethren ; and 
John, over the other two even of them, was the 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


101 


disciple whom Jesus loved. Clearly enough then, 
it is absolutely right , that, in heaven we should 
have special friends. Our Lord’s love toward all 
the Twelve was so abounding and affecting as to 
leave no room for complaint or thought of it. So, 
I suppose, it will be among the redeemed.” 

“ Yes,” I said, shooting the boat into a charm- 
ing nook under a tree and crossing the skulls in 
my lap, “ but one who is not congenial to you 
must soon perceive the fact.” 

“ Of course,” she replied, “and one who has 
been there a few centuries less than you, and 
knows less, must perceive that. But he need not 
be unhappy about it. There are different types 
of both holiness and happiness. Are not a red 
and white rose both equally roses ? 

“ Souls that are equally congenial are, here on 
earth, often kept apart. One is rich, the other 
poor; one high in position, officially or socially, 
the other low. Did you never hear a remark from 
a perfect stranger to which something within you, 
answered at once. 4 Ah ! he and I are of one 
spirit ! 5 It is like a glance of recognition from 
the opposite side of a crowded church. Our sur- 
roundings often freeze apart those who, when the 
grand melting time comes on, will promptly float 
together. 

“ For I suppose that, in the other life, every one 


102 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


is absolutely free , as free as birds in the air. So 
each may seek communion with congenial souls. 
All these conventionalities, which separate those 
who ought to be in fellowship, will have been 
swept away forever.” 

I thought, as she spoke, of other hindrances 
than these external, social ones, to a perfectly con- 
genial union. The soul is invested here in a per- 
sonality that is, often, nearly opaque. It cannot 
clearly reveal itself. I do not know, for example, 
but Sybil, at the core of her being is as congenial 
to me as Susie. But over it spreads this coarser 
fibre — the result perhaps, of early training, that, 
in one way or another, so often annoys me, as to 
make me nervous and apprehensive of a shock. I 
trust the spiritual body will be transparent — or, at 
least, that the soul will be able to make it so, on 
occasion. 

From the nook in which we were resting, a cul- 
vert passed in under the railway. As the tide was 
at the flood, there was just room within the arch 
to glide through without striking our heads or the 
sides of the boat. But this very restraint led into 
the larger liberty as we emerged on the inner side. 
The tide filled a picturesque recess, reaching away 
under the grand, old oaks and elms that towered 
above us with their groined arches as we glided 
between the grassy banks. Sybil had brought with 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


103 


her a well-filled basket of goodies. So we pulled 
up the boat and spread a savory lunch under a 
maple. When all was ready, and she had said 
grace, we fell to discussing the other life again, 
over our sandwiches and jam and the coffee that 
she heated with a spirit lamp. 

“ If we recognize friends in the better world,” 
I asked, “ how about friends whom we do not and 
cannot meet ? ” 

“ Yes,” 'she said, “the question that always 
arises — and a very painful one. How can we, 
haunted by the thought of the absent, enjoy those 
present ? I suppose we are in no condition, on 
earth, to answer that question. It is impossible 
here to imagine, I take it, the joy with which we 
shall be drawn toward Him whom these absent 
ones have rejected. They are present to us now, 
and He is not. He will be present then, and they 
not. 

“ But I had a hint as to this sad matter, years 
ago, which has been useful to me ever since. You 
know my sister Mabel, Mrs. Harrison, who now 
lives in Philadelphia. At boarding-school she had 
a classmate — Sarah Cressman, I think, was the 
name— whom she dearly loved, but who had little 
sympathy with her religious aims and views. 
When Mr. Harrison, a whole-souled, young Chris- 
tian lawyer he was, became engaged to Mabel, 


104 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


Sarah took it very hard. She had not the grace 
to rejoice with them who do rejoice, and she 
couldn’t endure to see any one coming in to ab- 
sorb so much of her friend’s love. So, though 
Mabel strove hard to keep her, she steadily cooled 
till the friendship came to an end. Mabel re- 
gretted it, but — but — ” she added, laughing, “ you 
know how it was, Alice, for you have been there , 
and are now. She was so absorbed in her lover, 
and so inspired by the noble life to which he was 
inviting her, that she contrived to live through it 
without breaking her heart. You see the point ? ” 

“Yes,” I said, “I do.” With George inces- 
santly in my thought, I was just in condition to 
see it. I can imagine that He Who is Chief among 
ten thousands and the One altogether lovely, may, 
in the glory of his presence, till and thrill the 
soul. And another thing I see — that I must take 
my risk, after all, and invite Sybil to be one of 
my bridesmaids. 

We had a charming float down the river home- 
ward, and ran the boat into the boat-house just as 
the first stars were beginning to light up for the 
night. 


XIII. 


September 20. 

We had a funny time at the Sewing Circle 
yesterday. Mrs. Bentley, Sybil, young Mrs. 
Daskam and I happened to be together for a 
while, in the same corner of the ladies’ parlor. I 
have been learning more about Mrs. Daskam, 
lately, than I ever knew before, and find her 
something of a character. Though she is not yet 
twenty-five, I doubt whether we have an octo- 
genarian in town, who is her match for dread of 
innovation. I meet people, cautious and timorous 
as to some things, who are bold and progressive 
enough as to others — like a house that is moss- 
grown in spots, and in spots freshly repaired. 
But the conservatism is spread all over Mrs. 
Daskam. I have not yet seen a point that has 
escaped. There is not a bat in her father’s old 
garret, or an owl in the woods, that is more dis- 
gusted with any new light. Some say she was 
born so — that, four or five months before her ar- 
rival in this mundane sphere, her mother was ter- 

( 105 ) 


106 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


ribly frightened by a runaway horse, and that the 
daughter’s timidity is due to that. But by com- 
mon report, her hysterical fear of things now runs 
back much farther for its source. One story is 
that it sprang from a covetous old Tory — though 
not then called such — in colonial times, who cur- 
ried favor with the Boyal Commissioners and 
feathered his nest, by always opposing the steady 
bent of his countrymen toward self-government. 
Anyway, all agree that it is due to heredity. 
Each generation has hung so heavy a weight of 
caution on the lineage, as to make it really won- 
derful that the lineage should have staggered along 
down to Mrs. Daskam’s time, and that she should 
have come into being at all. Her maternal grand- 
father walked the streets in cocked hat and small 
clothes and shoe-buckles, when every one else had 
discarded them ; and, when obliged, at last, to lay 
them by, he looked them over often, in the drawer, 
with a rueful face, almost in tears. 

But environment has set as many lions in her 
way as heredity. Iler parents cling to their rick- 
ety, old colonial domicile, that has been honey- 
combed by the rats, and, on a windy day, whistles 
and shrieks at every door and casement, though 
they are abundantly able to build anew. • I doubt 
whether a piece of furniture in the house is of 
less than fifty years’ standing. They prize every 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


107 


rheumatic, old chair and bedstead as a liquor-deal- 
er does the dingiest, mustiest cask of wine in his 
cellar. Their pictures and books are all anti- 
quated. They insist that, in going back toward 
mediaeval times, they leave an age of pinchbeck 
and veneering and varnish, for one of solidity and 
honesty. So, from her infancy, Mrs. Daskam has 
breathed conservatism in every room of the dwell- 
ing. Even in babyhood, they say, she carried a 
scared look at the world into which she had come, 
and, like the Wild Huntsman of the legend, with 
his head on his shoulders face backward, seemed 
wishing she could return to nonentity. If she 
had done so, she would have fulfilled the proph- 
ecy that a child should die a hundred years 
old. 

Of course, as to the matter of new opinions or 
practices, she is a young woman after Mrs. Bent- 
ley’s own heart. Of course, too, she was startled 
when the minister’s wife announced a new case of 
alarming heresy. 

“ Don’t you think Matilda Drummond actually 
asked her brother James, on his death-bed, last 
Thursday, to carry her love to their mother and 
their sister Aurelia, in heaven ! ” 

“ Well,” said Sybil, quietly, “ what of that ?” 

“ What of that ? ” cried Mrs. Daskam, more 
shocked, if possible, I thought, by Sybil’s coolness 


108 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


than by Matilda’s presumption, “ a great deal of 
that ! Where in the Bible can yon find a syllable 
to authorize such a thing ! ” 

“ I do not remember anything to forbid it,” re- 
plied Sybil. 

“ Why,” demanded Mrs. Bentley, “ could a man 
intrude into the Holy of Holies, except at the 
peril of life ? And did that compare with heaven 
for sanctity ? ” 

I saw on Sybil’s face a ripple of amusement at 
this logic. But she replied only : 

“ Matilda didn’t intrude. She merely stood out- 
side, and asked that the message be delivered if it 
might.” 

Mrs. Bentley and Mrs. Daskam both know very 
well there isn’t a more loyal, Christian family in 
town than the Drummonds. The departures of 
the mother and sister seemed to open channels 
between earth and heaven, through which a celes- 
tial atmosphere has been flowing in and around 
them, and they have breathed it ever since. They 
appear to me able almost to see through the veil. 
Somehow, with part of the family here, and part 
there beyond, the Biver of Death is bridged for 
them — like a light span, in a great park, thrown 
over a stream, both sides of which belong to one, 
undivided tract. 

“ But such doings as this,” said Mrs. Daskam, 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


109 


“ are just tlie way to bring in Spiritualism, and 
you know what work that makes ! ” 

“ Well,” smiled Sybil, “ it will be time enough 
to deal with Spiritualism when that appears among 
us. Messages, like this of Matilda, to departed 
friends, I have known sent by devout Christian 
people before. What is there unnatural about 
them ? I had a lesson, years ago, from our Nellie, 
when she was a little tot, about three years old. 
It was just after grandfather’s death. In one of 
his bureau-drawers there were various things that 
he had carried about him ; and, in rummaging 
there, one day, she found his glasses. 

“ There now ! ” she cried, holding them up, 
“ danpa’s done to heaven ’thout his specs ! What’ll 
he do ? ” 

Uncle John was lying dangerously sick in the 
house at the time, and Nellie soon made her way 
to his bedside, with the glasses in hand. 

“Are you doin’ to die?” she whispered 
softly. 

“I don’t know, my child,” answered uncle, 
turning his eyes toward her. 

“ Well, if you do die, are you goin’ to heaven ? ” 
she asked. 

“ I hope so,” he said. 

“ Den, if you are,” proceeded Nellie, in a busi- 
ness-like way, as if sending a package to a neigh- 


110 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


bor, “ here’s grandpa’s specs. Won’t you take ’em 
along to him ? ” * 

A ripple went over Mrs. Bentley’s solemn face, 
as Sybil added : 

“ JNow, I think the child, in her queer fancy, 
had a more sensible notion of the nearness and 
accessibility of heaven than many an older head.” 

“ But,” said Mrs. Bentley, this kind of talk 
seems to me like trifling with the awful solemnity 
of the other world.” 

“ I don’t see that the other world is one bit 
more solemn or sacred than this,” replied Sybil. 
“ It belongs to the same Father — was prepared 
by the same hand. Our friends over there are as 
dependent on Him, every moment, for continu- 
ance in righteousness as are we. In fact this is, 
at one point, a far more momentous world than 
that. For this seems to be the ‘ Valley of Decis- 
ion,’ in which multitudes stereotype their charac- 
ters and so fix their destinies.” 

“ Why, it seems to me frivolous,” cried Mrs. 
Bentley, “ to make so little of the dreadful secrets 
of eternity ! ” 

u Well,” persisted Sybil, u I have no great ob- 
jection to old fashions in general ” — at which, re- 
membering how she dresses, we all laughed — “ but 

* A true incident in the life of a young relative of the 
author. It afterward appeared in print. 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


Ill 


I think this old fashion of making the home that 
Jesus has prepared for us so ghostly and appalling 
a place is all conventional and morbid and un- 
scriptural. I don’t believe we are to be in any 
continual spasms of ecstasy, or convulsions of feel- 
ing of any sort. I expect that, when we have set- 
tled into our several lines of duty there, it will be 
the most natural and orderly place imaginable. 
Why should not any one, so disposed, send a mess- 
age of love to a friend who has gone before ? ” 
u With no reason to think it will ever reach 
him, groping in the dark ? ” asked Mrs, Bentley. 

“ There is at least no proof that it will not,” re- 
joined Sybil. “ If you had a brother traveling in 
Europe, and were not sure of his address, or of 
any reply, wouldn’t you write, doing the best you 
could toward communication ? There would be a 
pleasure in the mere attempt. It appears to me 
a miserable weakness, this putting the other life 
so far away — so utterly out of our range. ‘ Lay 
up for yourselves treasure in heaven,’ says the 
Lord. And, as to our greatest treasure, these 
dear pioneers going on before, He compels us to 
fulfill His own direction. We have to lay them 
up in heaven. ‘ For where your treasure is, there 
will your heart be also.’ So human nature works. 
When my brother Steve bought some lots in a 
western city, where he has never been even yet, 


112 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


my ! what a new interest he took in that place ! 
He hunted up the latest gazetteer, and subscribed 
for a newspaper published there and cut out all 
he saw about the place from other papers, — his 
whole soul went after his treasure. The Lord 
knew how our thoughts follow our investments. 
Though the Bible withholds full knowledge of 
the other world, that we may not become too far 
absorbed in it, we are encouraged to get the most 
vivid and familiar view of it we can. Why does 
Jesus speak of 4 a place,’ and talk of the 4 many 
mansions ’ ? Why do we hear of angels as minis- 
tering spirits, going back and forth continually, 
of course, between this world and the other, on 
loving errands, if not to imply that the other is near 
us, almost within our touch ? And, if they minis- 
ter to Us, why should not the friends also, who 
loved us while here ? And why should they not 
be near enough to receive our greeting \ ” 

44 How,” continued Sybil, 44 1 happen to know 
Matilda pretty well. She is not only a most ear- 
nest Christian girl, but one eagerly longing after 
her mother. She said to me lately : 

44 4 You cannot imagine how near and dear to me 
she seems. I cry out after her. Sometimes I 
write my feeling, as if in a letter to her.’ 

44 Then she turned to her desk, and handed me 
a paper, saying : 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


113 


“ 6 There is what I wrote, the other day.’ 

“ Oh, here it is in my pocket now. I bor- 
rowed it.” And Sybil read : 

“ O mother dear ! how I wish you could speak 
to me ! I know you love me as deeply as ever. 
I know you would answer me if it were best. 
How sweet it will be when we can speak face to 
face, But O it seems so long to wait ! Pray to 
our Father for me that I may have patience.” 

“ Why ! ” cried Mrs. Bentley, breathlessly. 
“That is nothing but Catholic prayers of the 
saints for us, outright! ” 

“Yes,” said Sybil, quietly, “I know it. But 
it came out of her heart, not from her head, as a 
dogma. I am not going to believe the Lord was 
offended.” 

“Well, well ! ” said the old lady, “what will all 
this come to? How much farther do you expect 
to carry it ? ” 

Then, evidently feeling that she had a duty of dis- 
cipline, and going on, in a sterner tone, she added : 

“You have brought in all sorts of heretical no- 
tions, Miss Martin, among our young people, and 
are turning them farther and farther away from 
the faith. These fine fancies will save no sinner. 
They would lull souls to sleep in their sins. And 
spreading such false doctrine, you take on your- 
self a fearful responsibility.” 


114 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


Her air was that of a woman who felt called 
upon to bear down her listener with the weight 
of authority and crush the evil in the seed. She 
was never more mistaken in her life. Sybil was 
roused as I have hardly ever seen her before. It 
was not anger. I have seen her annoyed — fretted 
with ripples on the surface. But there is too 
much of her, she has too much weight, to be 
really carried away by any gust of passion. It 
was the deep earnestness of one who deplored 
what she accounted a great and disastrous mis- 
take, and was resolved to tell the- truth in regard 
to it. 

“Well, Mrs. Bentley,” she said, “if any young 
person among us has gained more cheerful views 
of the gracious Father of us all than have some- 
times been held, I am heartily glad of it and quite 
ready to bear the responsibility. I believe, in my 
soul, that, if he should speak aloud as to this mat- 
ter He would say, in substance, ‘Why could ye 
not better understand and set me forth to men ? I 
have yearned in love toward every creature I 
have made. I sent My Son to save them. When 
any perish it is because they will — are bent upon 
it. I would have all men to be saved. O Israel, 
thou hast destroyed thyself, but in Me is thy help 
— not thy destruction. My invitation to life is 
wide as the world. Whosoever will may come. 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


115 


No mother ever loved her babe as have I the 
guiltiest soul on earth.’ ” 

Sybil threw such tenderness, as well as earnest- 
ness into her voice, that Mrs. Bentley’s eyes began 
to moisten. She had never seen matters in this 
light before. The idea that she might possibly 
have misrepresented the Lord she revered so deeply 
struck her with a sudden pang. Yet, she was not 
to be revolutionized so promptly in her opinions. 
She stood her ground, but the conversation gradu- 
ally frayed out till the time arrived for the ad- 
journment of the Circle. 


XIV. 


September 23 . 

I joined the Church, yesterday. For some time, 
from various reasons, I have thought of doing it. 
One reason — to be frank, as I always mean to be 
in this journal — was that, as George is already a 
member, my outward life might, like my inner, 
blend with his. I came up from girlhood with cer- 
tain queer ideas about the church. I thought of it 
as a kind of depository that garnered the sanctity 
from successive souls that had sojourned in it 
and finally gone heavenward. The chief bulk of 
their holiness, I supposed, they carried with them 
up to paradise. But I imagined that the long suc- 
cession of them, domiciled for years in the earthly 
courts, and filled and surcharged with the hallowed 
substance, could not but drop some share of it 
around them. These deposits made up an accu- 
mulation which, if I joined the membership, I 
should imbibe or inhale, or, in some other way, 
be unconsciously incorporating in my inner life. 
Another of these wild vagaries was, that the ideals 
( 116 ) 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


117 


which these holy souls had been holding before 
themselves, still floated about the precincts, and 
would somehow u allure to heaven and lead the 
way.” But, I supposed, I must have already 
ripened well on toward perfection before I could 
venture up among those whom I saw, from time 
to time, gathered at the Communion table. 

I have learned, however, that the church is only 
a training-school for very imperfect Christians, 
— that the growth in grace is to be not prepara- 
tory, but co-ordinate with, and part of, the church- 
life itself. Yet there remains, from my old fancy 
of an accumulation of holiness, the idea of the 
church as a conservatory from the chill of the 
world, in which one breathes a more genial at- 
mosphere and is cherished by the sympathy and 
counsel of the brotherhood. 

There was an illusion that I should somehow 
increase my responsibility by a public profession. 
This, Dr. Bentley has effectually dispelled. He 
shows me that I cannot increase responsibility — 
that it already covers every power with which I 
am endowed. I can only acknowledge the obliga- 
tion under which I now am, and go into sur- 
roundings favorable for discharging it. 

But, after all, I found myself halted, for a 
while, on the threshold. The church has a creed 
that bristles with dogmas, to some of which I can- 


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not subscribe, and others I do not understand. 
The fathers, who drew it up, seemed so anxious 
to protect the flock, that they feared to admit a 
new member, simply on evidence that he was a dis- 
ciple. But Dr. Bentley told me I could take the 
creed “ for substance of doctrine.” As nearly as 
I could make out, I accepted the essence of the 
document, without committing myself to every- 
thing implied in the letter. 

Dr. Bentley, though somewhat mediaeval theo- 
logically, by no means lives in such constant dread 
of heresy, as his good wife. During our discussion 
of the creed, I drew him to my favorite theme, 
our relation to the departed. He holds that our 
love to them may effect a wonderful uplift on 
ourselves. And he has a happy way of showing 
it. Before our Lord’s death, he said, the apostles’ 
devotion to Him was in a degree a sentiment. In 
a way they were sincere ; but they expected to de- 
rive much profit from Him. He was to be a mighty 
champion of Israel, a conqueror, a king, and reign 
in tenfold the glory of David or Solomon. They 
themselves were to be the grandees of his court. 
They fell out with James and John. They never 
got the better of all this folly till the Lord had 
been crucified and buried and had risen and 
ascended to heaven. But then, what a change! 
Ho more of this chase after bursting bubbles, no 


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119 


more low greed of place and pelf, but self-re- 
nunciation, brave bearing of hardship and perse- 
cution, — the very spirit of the ministering angels. 

Somewhat so, now, it is with our love for 
friends remaining and departing. While they 
linger here, all earthly elements alloy our affection. 
We hope for some advantage from them. We 
contract faults from them. We mislead them 
into faults of our own. But, when the mortal in 
them has put on immortality, how these im- 
purities are purged from our love ! They drew 
us laterally before; but it is vertically now, up 
toward the celestial heights. There is no self- 
interest to be served by them now, no room for a 
questionable motive, no taint to be either given 
or received. Our love ascends into the invisible, 
as turbid water evaporated by the sun and rising 
in pure, unseen vapor, heavenward. No man can 
cling, in his love, to the redeemed and glorified 
without sharing somewhat in their spirit. 

September 30. 

I went over with Sybil to Wellesley, yesterday. 
As we are both alumnae, and the term began, 
about a fortnight ago, we wanted to see the dear, 
old place again. It was my last visit as Alice 
Herbert. We enjoyed it with only a kind of 
somber pleasure. With classmates scattered over 


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the land, and some beyond the sea, we had a 
ghostlike feeling, flitting around there, as being 
about half in the body. We seemed to ourselves 
peering out from the past, that is already growing 
misty, on the busy young undergrads. 

As the ’bus rolled in by the Lodge, at the gate, 
however, the grounds seemed as delightful as of 
old. Indeed, viewing them now as a whole, while 
we used, in college-days, to be absorbed chiefly in 
one building or section, I think we appreciated 
them more fully than ever. No wonder that the 
dear founder selected them, at first, as an Eden 
for his boy. The father forbade any personal 
memento of himself to appear on the premises. 
Stat nominis umbra. Nowhere visible, he per- 
vades, like the air, unseen, every building and 
every lawn. 

We were charmed anew by bill and valley suc- 
ceeding one another. It was as if the whole tract 
had been rolling in huge billows, and the Master 
had said, again, “ Peace! be still,” arresting them 
before they could settle to their level. 

Hardly more than a breathe of air was astir. 
Every tree seemed whispering, “How are you? 
What strangers you have been of late!” — but 
softly, not to disturb the sturdy-hours. A leaf or 
two were floating down, here and there, sparse 
drops before the golden and saffron rain of a few 


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121 


weeks hence. The robins and bluejays evidently 
were disgusted at the raw weather we had, for a 
week or two, till yesterday, and are getting ready 
to migrate. The contankerous little English spar- 
rows were, of course and as usually, in a fierce 
fight. They seem to have adopted Hobbes’ doc- 
trine that war is the natural state of all animated 
creatures. 

Along the lake shore were the boats, drawn up 
and awaiting their owners, while the dainty spoon- 
oars stood in a sheaf on the veranda. And the 
lake, itself, after having been so lately vexed and 
fretted by the little navy, lay at rest, a Sleeping 
Beauty, among the hills. 

We met with several of the Faculty, and Sybil 
was so full of the great event impending over me 
that she overflowed in whispers which brought me 
more congratulations than were quite agreeable. 
But I could not help feeling how grand a thing is 
an institution , that lives on from age to age, and 
becomes a sort of sound -conductor, through which 
the founders speak from the other world to gen- 
erations yet unborn. 

The pleasantest part of our visit to me was our 
delightful row on the lake, in Sybil’s sister Eunice’s 
boat. As the owner was busy in recitation, we 
had the beautiful little craft to ourselves. It is 
an ungrateful, hateful thing to say : but, with the 


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frankness I mean always to preserve in this journal, 
I must say that Eunice’s room, on that particular 
occasion, was, to me at least, better than her com- 
pany. I knew she would take little interest in 
the matter that has been on our minds of late, and 
which, as we rowed, in a leisurely way, over the 
mirror-like surface, soon came up again. 

“This was very noble in the founder,” said 
Sybil — “ this prohibiting any memento of himself 
here. The whole college is, of course, despite 
himself, however, his magnificent memento. In 
a nobler sense than that of the inscription on 
Wren’s tomb in St. Paul’s Church, one may say 
“/Si monumentum requiris , circumspice .” But, 
do you know, Alice, I think there is a deal more 
of attention paid, and money devoted, to graves 
and tombs than the departed would desire or the 
Lord would approve.” 

“ Yet,” said I, “ you think it is a natural senti- 
ment that does honor to the frame through which 
a dear friend has smiled upon us and spoken 
words of love? ” 

“ Yes — to a degree,” she replied, as she thought- 
fully watched the drip of an oar, “ but it is car- 
ried to such excess ! Now, I hear that the Robin- 
sons intend to put up a costly shaft to their hus- 
band and father, in their lot at Mount Auburn. 
Why should they imprison so great a sum in 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


123 


marble, while so many poor among the living 
need it ? It almost shocks me that one departed 
should be compelled to lay his dead hand on 
this live and active sum of money and virtually 
kill it. Somehow it seems to me almost like 
murder.” 

“ And yet,” I said, “ barring such extravagance, 
the grave of a friend is, in some sense, the point 
of connection between him and us.” 

“ Hardly even that,” rejoined Sybil. “ What 
is there , but the decaying body he once inhabited 
and has done with forever ? If I had a woolen 
skirt, so bygone and moth-eaten into a heap of 
rags, that it could never be beaten clean, would 
you expect me to take much interest in it ?” 

“ Well, that is a queer notion,” said I. 

“ You will call it fanciful,” she added, u but 
the predetermined order of nature is that the 
body should go back to dust. And our dear ones 
look, not backward into charnel-houses but, for- 
ward to the glorious career on which they are 
entering. 4 Let the dead Past bury its dead,’ we 
may be sure, is their motto. Our Pilgrim Fathers 
have been much berated for their neglect of graves 
— smoothing them over that the Indians might not 
count them and discover the loss of fighting men. 
But I suspect their intense spirituality had quite 
as much to do with it — their vivid sense of the 


124 


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soul as the real being, which is no longer 
concerned with the corpse.” 

“ But the resurrection,” [ said — 

“ Yes,” she replied, “ I expected that. But, 
whatever may be true in regard to it, I suppose 
neither you nor I would say that anything which 
goes into the grave, or into the sea, or is devoured, 
it may be, by wild beasts, will pass into the spir- 
itual body. I know the Jews held that the bone 
called Luz, would be transferred unchanged, from 
one body to the other. But I never heard of 
scalpel or microscope that had discovered it. Our 
friends, I believe, care far less for their graves 
than do we. The hymn calls thorn ‘ the shrouded 
and the lonely.’ They are not shrouded. They 
are not lonely. They are up and away, in glad 
fellowship, in the social life of heaven. ‘ Shadows 
here, authenticating substance there.’ They are, 
I believe, a hundredfold more ardent and eager 
and full of enthusiasm than we, though doubtless 
calm and self-possessed, in grand enterprises that 
absorb them. 

“ Our Lord meant, I think, to make the impres- 
sion that the other life is near and easy of access ; 
by leading so many to and fro, between that sphere 
and ours. The son of the widow of Nain, the 
daughter of Jairus, Lazarus, the saints who arose 
at His crucifixion, and His own promise, ‘ I, if I 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


125 


go away will come again and receive you unto 
myself ’ — these all look like a trampling back and 
forth over the bourne, to tread it down and unite 
the two worlds. If we had friends who had gone 
to live abroad and who, after wearing the foreigu 
costume, should return to wear our dress awhile 
and then depart again and resume the other, we 
should begin to feel somewhat familiar with mat- 
ters over there.” 

“ But,” said I, as 1 almost steered the boat 
aground, being lost in our subject, “ even if they 
do not frequent their graves, you think they 
visit us ? ” 

“ Certainly ! ” she cried. “ If angels are minis- 
tering spirits, so much more may we look for that 
service from friends who have so loved us here. 
I believe that other world to be a natural 
world. People do there, as freely as we do here, 
what they wish to do. That, I suspect, is equally 
true of the lost, and is one of the most fearful 
sources of their misery. But, as to the redeemed, 
why should we doubt that they return to them on 
whom, for years, their hearts were set in the dear- 
est ties ? I suspect we are to them what a magnet 
is to steel.” 

“ But what can they do for us ? ” I asked. 
“ We are certainly not conscious of any benefit 
from them.” 


126 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


“ No,” she replied. “ Neither are we, from the 
angels as ministering spirits. Hardly from the 
Infinite Spirit Himself. Probably we shall dis- 
cover, by and by, a thousand benefits from them, 
of which we have no suspicion now. A Quaker 
in Philadelphia, who had helped off many a fugi- 
tive slave, was threatened by the roughs of the 
city. And, night after night, a large body of col- 
ored men, armed to the teeth, were on guard, with 
out his knowledge, around his house. We can 
no more extract from our characters and lives all 
we owe to our unseen friends than you can extract 
five months’ of sunshine from a ripened peach. 
Yet it is all there.” 

“ But heaven is so far aw r ay,” I objected — 
“such a journey for them to reach us!” We 
were skirting along the shore of the beautiful, pri- 
vate grounds across the lake. 

“ How do you know that ? ” asked Sybil. “ The 
centre, the Throne, may be immeasurably so. But 
the celestial hosts are perhaps as a vast army that 
has its headquarters at one point, while the brigades 
and regiments and foragers are distributed over a 
great region. And the great region, in this case, 
may be — the universe. But let that be as it may. 
Put the domicile of the redeemed as far away as 
you please. Distance is, to be measured, not by 
the number of leagues, but by the time it takes to 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


127 


pass it. San Francisco, before the Pacific Railroad 
was a month away, and now it is only a week. 
With what speed the spiritual body may fly from 
one point to another is inconceivable. The home 
of the blessed may be both beyond the stars and 
only a moment away from ns.” 

We had advanced so far in our talk, when 
something occurred which filled me with perfect 
horror. It will be a lurid spot in my memory as 
long as I live. It has been hard for me to go on 
so far in my account of the day without mention- 
ing it, and yet I hate to refer to it, even now. 
Though the storm, so to speak, that raised the 
fearful commotion has gone by, the waves are 
still heaving in me, and I feel the tremor of them 
in wielding my pen. • 

We were passing a dense grove, on the opposite 
side of the lake from the college, when Sybil sug- 
gested that we should land and take a short stroll 
in the woods. As there would be no tide rising 
to float the boat away, we left her with the prow 
just touching the sand, and the stern in much 
deeper water. In that, as we afterward found, a 
merciful Providence was protecting us. 

The wood being dense, and sunset near, we 
could see no object clearly at any great distance. 
At a point where the path was narrow and I a lit- 
tle in advance, we caught sight of two moving fig- 


128 


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ures, a little farther in shore. They seemed at 
first hardly more than shadows flitting through 
the woods. Whether they were men or women 
we could not tell, and, as they did not appear to 
be moving toward us, we saw nothing to fear. 
But Sybil, who was more wary and watchful than 
I, noticed that, as they apparently caught sight of 
us, they quickened their pace. She suspected, too, 
they went parallel with the shore, rather than to- 
ward us, partly to avert suspicion and partly to 
turn presently and rush down between us and the 
water. 

Instantly, shouting, “ To the boat, Alice, for 
your life ! ” she led the way, in which I was 
prompt to follow. At the moment, the two hor- 
rid prowlers dashed from the wood to the water’s 
edge and attempted to intercept us. Fortunately, 
to lull suspicion, they had gone too far up the lake 
for their purpose. But they came toward the 
boat with fearful speed. If we had not, feeling 
that we were in a life or death struggle, run as I 
never ran before, and hope never to be forced to 
run again, they would have headed us off. They 
were doubtless expecting that we should be delay- 
ed in pushing off. They were within a rod or 
two, when both of us, with a great bound, landed 
in the boat, clear astern, one tumbling over the 
other, and the faithful little refuge, under our 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


129 


momentum, lifted her prow and floated out into 
deep water. I never conceived before how grate- 
ful it is possible to be to an inanimate thing. We 
sat up, too much exhausted to take the oars, pant- 
ed out, “ Thank God ! ” and looked our pursuers 
in the face. Not a word was spoken on either 
side. We ourselves were too breathless to speak. 
It was a horrible pantomime, in which actions 
spoke louder than words could possibly have 
spoken. I never saw, in a human face before, 
so hideous a mingling of foul passion and baffled 
brutality. I can see, now, how a soul, inspired by 
the Evil One himself, can disfigure the human 
features. We both felt like falling on our knees 
in the boat, to give thanks for deliverance. And 
as we took up the oars and tiller ropes, and the 
men turned back into the wood, it seemed like 
the parting of souls for eternity. 


XV. 


September 30. 

I am utterly miserable. I shouldn’t have 
thought it possible that I could be plunged, out 
of such happiness as I have generally enjoyed 
since George put the ring on my finger, into such 
<* a depth as this. And the causes of it are chiefly 
in myself. Yet they are not all responsible causes. 
For one thing, I have not, even yet, recovered 
from that scene on the lake. I shudder, every 
few moments, with the thought, What if those 
creatures had reached the boats as soon as we ? 
The fact that they did not — that 1 am safe — af- 
fords no comfort great enough to counterbalance 
the horror. The covering seems to have heen 
torn off my whole nervous system, and, from head 
to foot, I am a palpitating network of irritations. 
One night, since the affair, I had all possible 
shapes of goblins, imps, and ogres, trooping through 
my dreams and grinning at me. And they were 
like a child’s toy-book with a hole cut through the 
leaves, clear to the last, so that a sailor, a judge, a 
( 180 ) 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


131 


robber, all appear witli the same face. These 
shapes, every one, had the features of the two 
wretches who chased us to the boat. 

Then, for another thing, we have had no decent- 
ly good cook since Marguerite left us. Father and 
Will cannot see why mother and I do not man- 
age things better. Every day there is some fresh 
annoyance. The kitchen is a perfect torture- 
chamber, with a new contrivance for laceration 
once or twice in every twenty-four hours. All 
this draws out of me an amount of peevishness 
and bitterness which I did not know myself well 
enough to suppose I had in me. Where is the 
line at which innocent nervousness passes into re- 
sponsible ill temper? If there is such a line, I 
believe I have been leaping, back and forth, over 
it, like an acrobat, day after day. 

Then, too, mother has been not quite well — 
not exactly a model of the patience of the saints. 
She has seen my faults with a marvelous perspi- 
cacity. I notice that, when she is out of sorts, 
her conscience is wonderfully quickened to “ the 
duty of being faithful,” as she calls it, to me. 
She hews to the line. She lays judgment to the 
line and righteousness to the plummet. They 
said, of old, that Nemesis was shod with wool. 
But my dear mamma is after me, on these occa- 
sions, in anything but silence. 


132 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


Last evening I had been berating Nora about 
her leaden bread. Mother overheard me, and, 
when I came out into the back-parlor, she seemed 
inspired with a sudden sympathy for Nora. She 
should think I would be ashamed to storm at a 
poor friendless girl in that fashion. How would 
I feel if I were in Nora’s place? etc. I was re- 
torting that the cook knew better, had several 
times done better, and was telling mother saucily 
that she was more moved by vexation at me than 
by concern for Nora, when George was ushered 
into the front parlor. As the gas, where we were, 
was not lighted and the room was dim, I supposed 
the sliding doors, between us and him, were shut. 
I thought, too, that I was speaking in very 
moderate tones. But, in the midst of it, mother 
twitched my sleeve and pointed to the doors. 
Then I saw, to my horror, that they were an inch 
ajar, and that George must have heard all I said. 
Of course I dreaded terribly the effect upon him. 
I felt that he had detected me in a very different 
spirit from any I had ever before shown 'him. 
At once I was sick at heart. He would think me 
double-faced. He would count me a hypocrite. 
What could I do? The very attempt to explain 
would show me conscious of guilt. Then, my 
pride rose into a defiant mood. All sorts of con- 
tending feelings were up in arms at once. 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


133 


I had met George before in the glad uncon- 
sciousness of a child. The thought of any calcu- 
lation to please him had not occurred to me. And 
now this stooping to the low level of expediency, 
of planning to avert his displeasure, had in itself 
a demoralizing effect. For the first time in my 
life I was not more than half glad to see him at 
all. That fact struck me through with alarm. I 
have asked myself since, why I feared meeting 
him, I suppose it was because the interview 
itself implied a flood of love on each side, a meet- 
ing of the tides in a glad commotion. And I was 
in so different a mood from that, just now, that I 
fairly dreaded the shock of the change. 

I cannot tell how I suffered. I almost wished 
that I had never come into life, or that I might 
go out of it. Mortified, humiliated, unfit to meet 
George, I was yet by no means melted or subdued, 
in any wholesome way. 

I went in to see him, expecting to find a lower- 
ing cloud on his face. I had read a dreadful story 
of a young man who was about to offer himself 
to a girl, but who, on the stoop, before he had 
rung the bell, hearing her abuse her mother, left, 
not to return ; and it was in my mind as I entered 
the room. 

But, whatever George had heard, he betrayed 
no coolness, but greeted me with as warm a kiss 


134 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


as the first lie ever gave me. The fact is, he not 
only had a deal more of equilibrium than I, but 
had heard of the affair on the lake and may have 
ascribed my tones to nervous excitement. 

But worse was to come. If I had only had the 
presence of mind to tell him in what a flutter I 
was — I needn't have referred directly to my 
scolding mother — and thrown myself on his sym- 
pathy, all would perhaps have been well. But, 
partly from the want of that, and partly from my 
stupid pride, I must have appeared at my worst. 
That horrid moment was a drain into which all 
the bad elements in me ran down together. I 
was wicked enough, hateful enough, goodness 
knows ; but certainly the show I made of myself, 
then and there, no more fairly represented me 
than a kitchen sink represents the rooms of a 
house. 

George had bought tickets for a philharmonic 
concert and wanted me to go. There again I 
was a fool. My miserable condition of the nerves 
made me feel more like going to bed than to the 
finest concert ever given. But, without giving 
this reason, I declined in so capricious a way that 
George was surprised and insisted, somewhat. In 
any better mood I should have seen that it was 
the persistency of love. He thought I would en- 
joy the concert. But I was so miserably out of 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


135 


harmony with him that I could see nothing but a 
show of authority. So, what I ought to have ac- 
counted a loving invitation, and met as lovingly, 
I took for an ugly collision of wills, and made it 
harsh and unfeeling. George was, for the time, 
deeply wounded. His call was short and his man- 
ner taciturn. lie left without offering me a kiss, 
and I rushed up to my room half distracted, in a 
flood of tears. There I am now. 

What am I to do ? Is there a more wretched, 
a more miserable, being than I on earth? I have 
grown old a year within an hour or two. George 
must have gone to his hotel, feeling that he had 
seen into me deeper than ever before — and seen 
nothing good. Everything is in utter confusion 
for me, and all black as midnight. When I came 
into my room, the closet-door was open, and I 
looked in, a moment, at my wedding-dress. It 
seemed a mocking spectre, whispering, in every 
rustle of the folds, that it was not for me. 
The more I admired it the sharper the pang it 
gave me. As I have just closed the door and 
turned away, the dress is as if departing from 
me irrevocably. 


October 1 — Evening. 

I passed a wretched night. The wakeful hours 
were the least miserable, for the visions in my 


136 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


troubled sleep were crowded with horrors. I saw 
George cleared of the last trace of sympathy for 
me. He was rubbing his hands, in great glee 
that he had found me out, before it was too late 
and he was tied to me for life. He told me he 
would take the ring again at my earliest con- 
venience — that he could probably find a better use 
for it. Then, suddenly, I was in the midst of 
friends, all staring in pity at me as a woe-begone 
creature. 

When my distress awoke me, I lay thinking 
how George would probably release himself. Not 
quite so heartless as he appeared in the dreams, 
he would take some less violent, but not less sure 
way. He would begin to be troubled with ill- 
health, and deeply regret that the wedding must 
be postponed. That would push it off for the 
nonce, and he could easily devise new evasions 
and delays. Of course my nervous weakness was 
at the bottom of these apparitions and terrors; 
but they were none the less real to me for that. 
And what I knew of the beauty of George’s char- 
acter, and the treasure I was losing, added a new 
pain to all I endured. If I had discovered any- 
thing really unworthy in him, it would have re- 
lieved the situation, though without blunting the 
sharpness of the disappointment. But there was 
no relief from that direction. The more I re- 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


137 


fleeted as I lay in my gloom, the more noble he 
appeared, and the more absolutely mine the fault 
for the breach between us. 

Before morning I concluded that I could not 
live so, much longer, and decided what I would 
do. Then I asked, again and again, with tears, 
for strength from above, and finally secured a 
little quiet sleep. 

This morning I sent, by a messenger, this note 
to George, 

October 1. 

“ My Dear George : 

“ Please call and see me to-day, as soon as you 
conveniently can. I am in deep distress. 

u Yours as ever, 

e( Alice.” 

I hardly expected to see him — he is so busy — 
till afternoon. But the dear fellow had no sooner 
read my note than he dropped everything and 
hastened over. I saw him, through the parlor- 
window, coming, and it put me in such a commo- 
tion that I was afraid I should betray my weak- 
ness. 

The cordial kiss with which he greeted me took 
off from me what seemed the weight of the earth. 
When I asked him if he could forgive my treat- 
ment of him last evening, he folded me to his 


138 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


breast and answered over and over again with his 
lips, — though not with words. None of those 
were needed. I felt lifted out of an abyss of hor- 
rors into paradise. I thought at first I would not 
tell him what I had undergone. His tenderness 
seemed to forbid referring to anything so dismal. 
But in spite of myself, enough of it came out to 
move him more deeply with concern for me than 
he had been moved last evening, with annoyance. 

O how I delighted in the largeness of his 
nature ! This disturbance, which has gone down 
through my whole being, was hardly more to him 
than a breeze through a forest is to the mountain 
beneath it. I thought, because he offered me no 
kiss, he was deeply wounded. The truth is, it 
seems, he feared I was too much irritated to wel- 
come it, and so did not venture. And I found 
too, that, though he appeared so calm and leisurely 
this morning, he had just left an important case, 
into which he was plunged, with his law-books 
around him, and all its perplexities crowding upon 
him. 1 thought I knew George. But I found 
I had only struck a gold vein leading into a great 
mine. 

And how sweet a rest I enjoyed, on his shoul- 
der! In the due order of things, as I supposed, 
the tumults of the soul are to be quieted by first 
giving the body a long repose. But it was other- 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


139 


wise, this morning. His magnanimity and tender- 
ness so soothed and refreshed the soul that I felt 
stronger in my whole frame. My nervous palpi- 
tation was calmed. I wondered what had become 
of the tremor that seemed to be shaking out iny 
life. 

Though George showed no haste to be gone, I 
knew I ought not to keep him from his office. 
Twenty minutes before, I could not have believed 
it possible to rise from my abyss into anything 
like pleasantry. It would have appeared auda- 
cious. But now, with eyes swimming in tears of 
joy, and three or four kisses, I said “ There is the 
door ! but don’t you fail to come again at seven ! ” 

In the evening I asked him how it was that 
any such misunderstanding could arise between 
two persons who thoroughly love each other. 

“Oh,” he said, “unfortunately that is plain 
enough. The body is to the soul, what too many 
a member of Congress is to his constituents, a 
very poor representative. Like him it has too 
many interests of its own to look after. Bad 
digestion and weak nerves make a show of ill- 
nature for which the soul is hardly responsible. 
Looks that are only earnest are supposed to be 
angry. Tones that mean pleasantry are taken for 
mockery. Weary attitudes are charged to indiffer- 
ence. Then, too, words are so poor a vehicle, 


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often, for thought. They break down under the 
weight of it and convey only half our meaning, 
or else, when the soul is on fire, they drag heavily, 
like Pharaoh’s chariots without the wheels. Again, 
under nervous excitement, they go faster and far- 
ther than we intended. They involve us in their 
own perplexities and only darkly hint our thought. 
How often I have wished that words were like the 
notes of a musical score ! The notes make no 
false impressions. Every one of them means pre- 
cisely one sound — can mean no other. Musicians 
of a hundred different lands and languages would 
all sing or play them alike. An able lawyer can 
hardly write his own will so as to prevent dispute 
over it ; but there are no two opinions abut the 
true rendering of the “ Messiah ” or the “ Crea- 
tion.” 

“And is that one reason,” I asked “for our 
having so much music in heaven ? Anyway, how 
sweet a hope it is that, by and by, the soul will 
have, in the body, a better servant ! ” 

“Certainly it is,” he said. “I infer as much 
from the very term, ‘spiritual body.’ As that 
new form is to be strong and incorruptible it 
will, of course, have no diseases or exhaustion, or 
troublesome nerve-centres which now are, too 
often, storm-centres. It will raise no clamor about 
any separate interest of its own. Paul says, you 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


141 


know, 4 Whether there be tongues, they shall 
cease.’ That, I imagine, may mean that we 
shall have some far better way of communicating 
thought and feeling. Isaac Taylor supposes we 
may have a power of throwing open the interior 
life, precisely as it is, to any friend among the re- 
deemed, and then, to preserve our individuality, 
may close it up again at pleasure. With so perfect 
a mutual understanding, how far better we can 
help one another in the study of truth and the 
culture of character ! So too in discussion. What 
a waste of mental strength and time and temper 
there has been, in all the word-battles along the 
ages, simply because the disputants gave different 
meanings to the same word ! We may well be- 
lieve there will be none of that in the spiritual 
body.” 

“ But,” I said, “ you wouldn’t think waste of 
time — or duration — of much account, when we 
have a whole eternity of it from which to draw?” 

“I am not so sure as to that,” he replied. 
“You remember that, when our Lord had fed five 
thousand men, beside women and children, with a 
word, when He had shown that He could turn 
every stone on the planet into a loaf, in an instant, 
if He chose, He would allow no waste. 4 Gather 
up the fragments, that nothing be lost.’ It was 
like saving, by the cupful, the flood that goes 


142 


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over Niagara. I am not so sure that He will ex- 
pect us to waste the duration in eternity.” 

“ But as to misunderstandings,” I said, “ I hope 
you and I need not wait to pass into the other 
world, that we may avoid them ! ” 

“ No, darling,” he answered quickly, “ there is 
a wonderful power in souls, to come through a 
close intimacy into a close harmony. Do you 
know, it has often been noticed that husband and 
wife gradually resemble each other, even in their 
looks? And, as spirit is probably more plastic 
than matter, how much closer may become the 
affinity of souls ! If a needle, left in contact with 
a magnet, is soon magnetized itself, why should 
not one heart learn to respond to another? We 
have both learned something, I am sure, from this 
little affair of last evening. We shall be quicker 
to take each other’s meaning. We shall each more 
tenderly bear with the other. And so our two 
lives will grow into one well-rounded whole.” 

It was with this sweet promise of the future 
that I parted from him at the door, and watched 
him till his retreating figure shrouded itself in 
the night. 


XVI. 


October 14. 

It is the last night of my single life. George 
has just left and I am here alone in my room. 
The moon is half full, and the stars are looking 
down in their golden beauty on the checkered 
spectacle of human joys and sorrows. Here, out- 
side my window, are the stealthy shadows, lurking, 
like shapes of evil, and almost startling me with 
the thought that so much happiness must have 
some counterbalancing sorrow awaiting it. How 
slutnberously the brook whispers, idling along! It 
has nothing to fear as it wanders, through the gloom, 
into the wood. How different from Sybil and me, 
in the forest by the lake ! The higher we rise in 
the order of being, the greater become our perils. 

What strange, weird figures the foliage takes, 
outlined against the sky ! There is a face with a 
huge nose, and another with a projecting chin, in 
profile. Here is a dog’s head and there a lion 
with open mouth. All things, in the magic of 
the moonlight, mold themselves into new shapes. 

( 143 ) 


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144 

How hard and dry they would be if I could see 
nothing in them, more than the pictures they 
make on the eye ! 

What is to occur to-morrow forces me back to 
take myself in hand and look the object over 
thoughtfully. What have I done thus far in life ? 
Immeasurably more important — what have I 
been ? O my Father ! how miserably unworthy 
I am of the brimming cup of blessing Thou hast 
put into my hand ! Am I not deceiving George 
with false pretences ? Am I worth a tithe of what 
he takes me for ? He has idealized me all over. 
If he can manage to think such a face as mine 
handsome, in what a rosy glamor he must see the 
soul ! How shall I ever arrive at what he sup- 
poses he sees in me already ? 

And what a crisis is this in my life ! How 
completely I am throwing my happiness and hopes 
into the hands of another ! Father and mother, it 
is true, have had these as fully in their keeping ; 
but entrusting myself to them has been a life- 
long process. Or rather I had no part in bring- 
it about. But, to-morrow evening, I do it in a 
moment, of my own free motion. Why are such 
crises appointed to us? Why does not life flow 
on with as little change as that brook under my 
window ? To compel us to take the whole life 
into view? — to steer and not drift? May there 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


145 


not be some sort of crises in the next world, for 
us? I have commonly thought of life there, as 
running on, with an even current, through eter- 
nity. So we tone it down into our everlasting 
soliloquy within and monotony without. But 
what if we reach, occasionally, junctures and 
changes that are as great as to-morrow’s event now 
seems to me, apd then take new departures along 
new lines ? An Eternity of existence would seem 
almost to require that. 

But it is after ten. I must here close up so 
much of the record of Alice Herbert’s life as this 
diary contains. So, as 1 turn off the light, fare- 
well little room in which I have passed so many a 
happy hour ! Farewell my desk at which I have 
written, and bureau at which so often I have 
dressed for the day ! And bed, from which I 
have wandered off in strange adventures through 
dreamland, and pictures about the walls, and chairs 
and carpet — all farewell ! Here closes up the first 
great chapter of my life, and to-morrow opens the 
second. Master ! make that second more — far, 
far more — like Thine own ! 

Palmer House, Chicago, 
October 20. 

I have brought my diary, in my trunk, on our 
wedding-trip, to note, while they are fresh in my 


146 


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memory, some events of these days so momentous 
to me, and so replete with happiness. 

The wedding was all I could desire. George’s 
utter unselfishness and tender consideration have 
betrayed themselves in every word and act. We 
adopted so much of the Episcopal form as to kneel 
while Dr. Bentley laid his hands on our heads in 
prayer. I liked his words in handing the ring to 
George, to be placed on my finger: ‘‘Within this 
little circle may you find the horizon of a world 
of peace and joy ! Give and receive this pledge 
of love as also a silent monitor to remind you of 
this evening’s solemn vows, and a foretoken of 
of that more perfect and fully rounded and un- 
broken blessedness which shall endure, we trust, 
for you when the gold shall have become dim and 
the most fine gold changed ! ” 

My angelic Susie was there, propped with pil- 
lows, looking on in her heavenly self-forgetful- 
ness, and, as I thought, with a face already aglow 
in the light of the land into which she is slowly 
passing. Nothing in all the room, not even Dr. 
Bentley’s prayer, gave me so strong an impression 
of a sanction from above, resting on our union, 
as did Susie’s presence. I am thankful, beyond 
measure, that no slightest trace of her interest 
in George seems to have been suspected by 
any one but me. This is one secret that I shall 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


147 


keep even from him — at least till she has passed 
away. 

It was all, of course, delightful. If a woman 
could not enjoy her own wedding, where would 
she find a sunny spot in life ? Yet, somehow, a 
sombre vein ran through it. Amidst all the wit 
and laughter and sparkle and effervescence of the 
scene, I had a feeling that I was skimming the 
surface of its profounder meaning — sailing a pleas- 
ure-boat over the deep. Yet, not for the world 
would I be without these thoughts. Great share 
of my self-respect would take its departure with 
them. 

The guests threw handfuls of rice after us, as 
the carriage rolled away, dismissing us they knew 
not whither. Indeed, it was one of George’s lit- 
tle fancies not to tell even me whither — beyond 
Albany. And I enjoyed it all the more. I felt 
the more absolutely his — that I was committing 
myself more unreservedly to him. There is a 
fascination for me in so breaking away from the 
routine of life and venturing off like a bird on 
the wing — while still sweetly conscious that we are 
not presumptuously tempting Providence. But 
are these days of such intense enjoyment quite up 
at the summit of the nobility of one’s nature ? 
Are they in perfect accord with “ more blessed to 
give than to receive”? Hot that the question 


148 


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really troubles my conscience ; but I am glad to 
find that something like it has occurred to George 
— that we are in perfect harmony with each other. 
He has been asking himself whether he has quite 
a right to be as happy as he is. If enjoyment is 
only the foam of one’s life, our experience, just 
now, seems to be all foam. May we be so much 
the more thorough for it in consecration when we 
return to the common round of life ! 

I was glad when I found George was taking 
me to this town of amazing growth. It reminds 
me of the palace in Milton’s pandemonium that 
“ rose like an exhalation.” May it be put to bet- 
ter uses than that ! George says he has asked 
many people for an explanation of the swift in- 
crease of the city. 

“ O,” they say, “ this is the strategic point. 
There must have been a great city here.” 

But no one seems to have known that in ad- 
vance. It is hindsight not foresight. Many 
thought such a city was somewhere afloat in the 
future ; but where it would anchor uo one could 
conjecture. And, in guessing, scores, if not hun- 
dreds, made ruinous investments in lands at one 
point and another. George says that, though there 
are laws governing the movements of population, 
some of them are as mysterious as the laws of the 
weather. 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


149 


Chicago started in the race in infancy when 
other cities were already full-grown, and it has 
grown as it ran. One of its competitors after 
another has, so to speak, thrown a patronizing 
look over its shoulder, at the stripling, then turned 
its head slowly as it saw the stripling abreast, and 
then — had no further occasion to look backward. 
“ What manner of child shall this be ? ” is the 
question that all the nation has been asking, and 
is likely to ask more wonderingly, every decade, 
as the census comes out. 

October 21 — Sunday Evening. 

We have heard a sermon to-day, on the text, 
“ And entering into the tomb, they saw a young 
man sitting on the right side.” “ An angel,” said 
the preacher, “ some thousands, perhaps hundreds 
of thousands, of years of age, yet young and fresh 
as ever.” And the delightful subject was, “ Per- 
petual youth in heaven.” George and I were, of 
course, deeply interested, it was just in the line of 
so much of our thought and conversation. We 
discussed the matter on our way back to our hotel 
and after we reached our room. 

“ As to that young man in the tomb,” I said, 
“ I have always supposed that the angels, when 
appearing among men, assumed such forms as 
suited them. If so, nothing more could be in- 


150 


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ferred from it than from a youthful mask that an 
old man might put on.” 

“ But,” replied George, u I doubt the correct- 
ness of what you have supposed. You remember 
that, when Elisha prayed the Lord to open his 
young friend’s eyes (2 Kings vi. 17), he saw the 
mountain full of horses and chariots round about 
the prophet. I think it not unreasonable to infer 
that the angels always have outward forms. I 
judge that, when these appeared to men, they 
were not assumed for the occasion, but only that 
the souls’ eyes of the men were opened to see 
what had been invisible. They were like a blind 
man, restored to sight, who perceives only what 
was around him before. There is no instance in 
the Bible, in which an angel, when appearing, has 
an aged look. They seem to show always the vig- 
or and energy of youth.” 

“ Then,” said I, “ you would make an angel or 
a redeemed saint to be, rather absurdly, young and 
old both.” 

“Ho — and yes,” he answered. Your idea comes 
from our conventional notions. We have so long 
seen a grave face and bent form and slow steps 
connected with age, that nothing else seems be- 
coming. But who ever thought that the wisdom 
and experience of age would hurt a young man, 
if he could have them ? How fine a thing, we 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


151 


often say, if a father could bequeath these, with 
his money, to his boy ! 

“ But how glorious, in the other life, to keep 
the eternal freshness of youth ! — to have, so far 
forth, something of the immutability of God Him- 
self ! to be gaining, from century to century, in 
breadth of view, in expansion of soul, in the pow- 
er to achieve great ends, and yet be as buoyant 
and fresh, and keen in relish of all things grand 
and beautiful, at last as at first ! In childhood we 
tingled to our fingers’ ends, with delight in 4 Rob- 
inson Crusoe ’ or the 4 Arabian Nights,’ as we never 
can do now. It was a perpetual spring morning. 
There was always a foam on the top of the day 
and sweetening left at the bottom. We may keep 
our exuberance in the other life.’’ 

44 You know, Alice,” he continued, as we sat by 
our window, looking down on the street, with its 
moving panorama of cars and carriages and pedes- 
trians, 44 how all things here are changing — how 
transient they are. It is the worm at the core of 
our enjoyments. I have read that, when George 
the Fourth was passing through London, in a 
magnificent pageant, a courtier cried, with his 
face all aglow, 4 Could there be anything, your 
majesty, added to this?’ 4 Yes,’ said the king, 
thoughtfully — 4 continuance .’ You and I are, for 
the time, as full of happiness as we can hold. We 


152 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


are in the freshness of our youth. Were some 
magic mirror, however, held up before us, in 
which we could see our future selves gray and 
wrinkled and bowed with age, it would cloud 
somewhat this sunny hey-day of ours. But, when 
we meet in a circle of old friends, beyond the 
bourne, what a thrill there will be in the thought 
that we are to be forever young ! No creeping 
feebleness, no dimness of the eye or deadness of 
the ear or failure of any faculty or power forever! 
An eternal newness and energy of life, for the 
glorious enterprises spread before us all? The 
memories of old men fade, here ; but, there, what- 
ever we acquire we may hope to retain forever.” 

u This is all very delightful a hope,” I said. 
“ But what is your ground for it ? ” 

“ Why,” replied George, “ it seems to me to follow 
from the necessity of the case. It is the body of 
flesh and blood that grows old. We have no trace 
of evidence that the soul, in itself, has any such 
liability.” 

“ But the soul seems feeble in old age,” I ob- 
jected. 

“Yes,” he said, “so it seems. But only be- 
cause it can do so little with the body through 
which it must act. As some one puts it, the 
harper is as skillful as ever — only the harp is 
broken and out of tune. But, in the other life, 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


153 


we are expressly promised a body that shall be 
free from all this. It is raised in incorruption. It 
is raised in power. It is raised a spiritual body. 
If these attributes do not preserve it in perpetual 
youth, I should like to know what they are for. 
Such a body can no more grow old than the air 
or the sunlight. There is nothing in it on which 
age can take hold. 

“ Some people imagine that time, alone, works 
changes — that, merely by the lapse of years, build- 
ings, for instance, decay to ruins. A great mis- 
take. If the Parthenon could have been saved 
from war and storms and the crumbling effect of 
heat and cold, time would never have hurt it. 
We should see it as perfect to-day as when the 
architect pronounced it finished. 

“ So, neither in men does time cause the infir- 
mities of age. It is toil and want and worry and 
chemical changes at work on the body, that bring 
it about. Even against all drawbacks we see men 
who carry the freshness of their youth down into 
later life. Coleridge said that genius is nothing 
else than that. They jealously guard their health, 
and, as far as may be, keep their bodies young. 
They carry along their enthusiasm with them, and, 
at the last moment, show ‘the ruling passion 
strong in death.’ 

“Now, in the spiritual body, what is to pre- 


154 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


vent, as centuries roll on, the increase , rather 
than the loss of the buoyancy, the ardor, all the 
fresh impulses, of youth ? The possession of one 
great truth inspires us to reach after another. 
Broadening views call out latent energies. Above 
all, the continuous influx of life from the 
Infinite Source of life will expand and uplift 
the soul.” 

“A glorious prospect,” I interposed, “and I 
want to hear more. But, just now, it fails to 
meet a certain, inner want of my being. In other 
words I would like some dinner.” 

Young as he is, George is growing somewhat 
bald, and wore his hat down to the dining-hall. 
As he went in, and a waiter put it on the rack, in 
a long row of others as much alike, apparently, as 
so many eggs, George said, 

“ You’ll never be able to tell that hat again.” 

“ O yes, sail ! ” said the man. “ You see ! ” 
Perhaps it was because of the sharp contrast 
with the matter on which we had been talking in 
our room — but I could not avoid feeling how ab- 
sorbed in the lody , with its needs and appetites, 
we all became, as we took up our menus. The 
selection of dishes, the rattle of knives and forks, 
the words overheard, and the loaded trays passing 
in every direction — well, how much less intent 
were we in our service to palate and stomach than 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


155 


the denizens of a menagerie at feeding time? It 
is all probably best. I am no ascetic. But it is a 
comfort that, by and by, in the life of which the 
preacher spoke, this morning, we shall save the 
immense aggregate of time we give to this, for 
higher uses. 

As we came out, the waiter waa ready with 
George’s hat. He had made no mistake. And 
we learned, afterward, that the man identifies each 
one of fifty hats, however similar. To me, with 
my wretched memory, it seems almost supernat- 
ural. A couple of centuries ago, he would have 
been in peril as a wizard. 

After dinner, we walked down to the Lakeside 
Park — a sadly neglected place. I hope they have 
better pleasure-grounds than that in this modest 
town. The sight of the lake, in its immensity, 
with no farther shore in view, appeared to bring 
back to George’s mind the matter we were discuss- 
ing before dinner. 

“ With this eternal youth,” he said, “ I believe 
there will be perfect freedom for each one to follow 
his bent. I noticed, in Prof. Stuart’s commentary 
on Proverbs, lately, that the text, 4 Train up a 
child in the way he should go, and, when he is 
old, he will not depart from it,’ is commonly quite 
misunderstood. There have been thousands of 
sermons preached from it, all making it mean by 


156 


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4 the way,’ the righteous , godly way. But it refers 
only to the bent of his genius — the employment 
in which he is fitted to succeed best in life. Now, in 
this world of ours, that is hard to learn and to do. 
Mr. Wilson, our village-merchant, has wished, all 
his life, that his father had made him a machinist. 
His bookkeeper, Morrison, has told me that, if he 
could begin life again, he would be an artist 
though obliged to live on bread and water. My 
classmate Holmes, who had a passion for old 
Saxon and its literature, said often, on his death- 
bed, that he hoped he should be permitted to take 
up that study in heaven. In various ways we are 
wrenched out of our natural bent. But not so, I 
trust, in the next life. There we may be free to 
find, each one, the occupation for which the Lord 
adapted him in the very make of his being. From 
what a deal of friction that will free us ! What 
zest and ardor it will throw into life ! What im- 
mensely greater variety, where none are forced 
from outside themselves into a monotonous uni- 
formity ! 

44 As you know, thousands of poor mortals are 
thrown, like the babies of Flat Head Indians or 
girls in China with dwarfed feet, into surround- 
ings that wrench them, at the very outset, from 
their natural inclination. They are hardly allowed 
to become aware of the inclination. But, in the 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


157 


other life, one may well hope, these perversions 
fall off. There deemed discover for what they 
were made. So they grow into the diversities that, 
like the various colors in a painting or tones in a 
symphony, make up the grandly rounded whole. 
Through heredity, and largely through occupations, 
we get our faces and looks from outside ourselves, 
But, in the spiritual body, the soul, from within, 
beyond reasonable question, will shine out in its 
strength and mold the countenance to express its 
own inner life. 

“ With all evil, too, departing from the soul to 
leave it pure in its white innocence, what a recov- 
ery from the incubus in that ! The fresh vigor 
of a man raised from disease, with the blood ting- 
ling along his veins, in a bright and bracing spring 
morning, must be nothing compared with it. 
Moreover, on this side of the veil, we draw spir- 
itual life from God, but hardly think of receiving 
new vitality from Him through the whole being. 
We rejoice that, while 4 the outward perisheth,’ 
the 4 inward is renewed day by day.’ These 
perishable bodies, that begin to die when first 
born into life, seem to allow nothing else. But, 
in the world to come, why should not the Lord, 
the Fountain of Life, as I said awhile ago, pour 
into us fresh currents of vitality and energy, from 
moment to moment ? ” 


158 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


So we strolled along, conversing, and wondering 
at the sea before us, as it rolled in huge billows, 
all good to drink , till the approaching chill of 
evening sent us back to the hotel 


XVII. 


February 10, 1881. 

My Diary looks reproachfully at me as I open 
it. I have been sadly neglectful. We jaunted 
about so incessantly, after that talk by the lake- 
side in Chicago, and I have been so perpetually 
busy, since our return, in receiving and returning 
calls, and getting settled in housekeeping, that I 
have had hardly a breathing-spell. After my 
small way, I have been making history, instead of 
writing it. 

Well — here we are in dear, old Raynham, en- 
joying love in a cottage. And I am as sure that 
it is genuine love as I am that this is a genuine 
cottage. I honestly believe, moreover, that I en- 
joy our modest home more than I could a pala- 
tial mansion in the city. That , I fancy, with all 
its sumptuous furniture and bric-a-brac, would be 
already so full of interest, outwardly, that there 
would hardly be occasion or room for infusing 
into it any charm from our wedded life. Some- 
how this smaller scope of material things around 

( 159 ) 


160 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


us seems to leave a larger range for the soul’s ac- 
tivities and gratifications. And fine books and 
engravings, of which we own a few, have some 
charm, in contrast with these plain surroundings, 
that they could not have in a gilded drawing- 
room. 

Then, this open fireplace in the cozy library ! 
Though we have a furnace sending up from be- 
low its hot breath, here and there, I look on that 
as a low menial, good for only the physical com- 
fort it affords. But this cordial dispenser of good 
cheer, with its back log and andirons and wide 
open welcome to the hearthstone, is rather a friend 
than a servant. It ministers to the soul, as well as 
to the flesh. Here I have George’s gown and slip- 
pers ready, with his favorite easy-chair ; and, while 
the ruddy blaze goes roaring up the flue, I plump 
down in his lap and lay my head on his shoulder 
and enjoy — well I can think of no words adequate 
to the occasion. In “ the rhetoric of understate- 
ment’’ I should say that the dear fellow improves 
on acquaintance. I feel like a lapidary, bringing 
out a great diamond, who finds some new and 
more beautiful fact every day. 

Caesar too — I must not forget Caesar. His joy, 
when his master comes in, is a sight to see. He 
shakes his huge, shaggy form, from the tip of his 
nose to the end of his tail. He wants to paw 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


161 


George all over, and to kiss him with those mon- 
strous jaws that are the more striking for the love 
and delight he contrives, in his rough way, to ex- 
press through them. Caesar carries a great weight 
of personality about with him. With his immense 
bulk and stately step, he seems to rise above the 
animal level and claim a higher recognition. Cer- 
tainly, as he devotes all this ponderosity and 
strength to protection and tenderness, I respect 
him more than I can some men. When we have 
taken our seats by the fire, he curls up on the rug 
at our feet for a nap. He is so huge that it must 
take a deal of sleep to saturate him. He sleeps so 
heartily too, that that must require a great stock 
for supply. 

Hot a personage to be slighted is T-hommy also, 
in his cage. Born in captivity, he hardly suffers, 
I take comfort in believing, from his confinement. 
He seems quite content with his narrow range of 
life and experience. .If he has no use for those 
higher endowments, his wings, with which he 
might rise, careering through space, he is only a 
reminder to us of low-lived men who leave neg- 
lected all their better nature. Does he sing auto- 
matically, like a music-box ? Or has he as conscious 
a joy in it as a prima donna ? Who can tell ? 
Anyway, I mean to believe, he throws his little 
life into every trill that awakens us at daybreak. 


162 


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Here, too, are our beloved books. The best of 
them all — there is no other, as Sir Walter said to 
Lockhart, on his death-bed — lies on the table. 
May it ever be foremost of the treasures of our 
home ! There is a full set of my beloved Irving. 
God made Washington childless, they say, that he 
might become the Father of his Country. And 
that early love of Irving seems to have been 
blighted that he might take to his pen and win 
the love of the nation. Was there ever a dearer 
old bachelor? Here, too, is Prescott. What a 
lesson to us is that prodigious industry in his 
blindness ! And Hawthorne, making all sorts of 
originality and beauty to cluster about every ob- 
ject he touches — like a sweet solution, encrusting 
the poorest packthread with its crystals. Beside 
him there stands Lowell — our old, rural friend 
Hosea Bigelow, looking out with wise philosophy 
and noble love of human kind and blasting scorn 
of shams and wrongs, through his boorish mask. 
Thank the Lord for books ! 

And what could we do without the piano and 
the flute, with which we make up our home orches- 
tra for Sunday evenings ? I hope never to drop 
my music, as so many a married woman does. 
Among all my inanimate friends for a sombre 
hour I count my piano the best. Unlike some 
other friends whom I have known, it meets every 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


163 


touch with exactly the respouse I seek. It knows 
no estrangements — has no moods of its own to 
gratify. It is no music-box or crank-organ, either, 
to wear a few tunes threadbare, and afford no oth- 
er. These keys are an alphabet, rich in exhaust- 
less utterance for every mood “ from grave to 
gay, from lively to severe.” 

But, not least of all, I prize my plants. At 
one point they have the better of books, or engrav- 
ings — they live , they grow. They have something 
new to show, every day. And, as the mediaeval 
monks claimed to have bottles full of the Egyptian 
plague of darkness, my plants are a section cut 
from last summer and brought over into February. 
How they differ among themselves — the rose-bush, 
scentless and thorny, save where it blooms, and 
the geranium, fragrant in every leaf ! What an 
object-lesson of -faith in the darkest hours, is my 
night-blooming Cereus ! If, as Longfellow tells 
us, flowers are “ stars that in earth’s firmament do 
shine,” how fit that this should show its beauty 
only in the night ! 

Whatever claims there may be upon me, I will 
see, and that often, my darling Susie. The other 
day as, sitting by her bedside, I looked steadfastly 
on her, I saw her face as it had been the face of 
an angel. Though she would gladly be gone, if 
it were the Master’s will, lie keeps her here, I am 


164 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


sure, to enable ns to imagine the heavenly society, 
to see what a world it must be that is composed 
of spirits such as hers. She has, of course, no 
idea of the prodigious unconscious influence she 
is exerting. There she lies as weak as a babe, 
and yet lifting all around her like a groundswell. 
It is a greater power, I am convinced, than that 
of all her healthy and strong friends together. 

Of course she and I could not talk long, with- 
out raising the subject that is constantly in her 
mind and not a little in mine. She counts me, I 
know, as the dearest friend she has on earth, out- 
side her own family, and spoke of meeting me as 
such, when I, as well as she, shall have crossed the 
River. 

This reminded me of my discussion with Sybil, 
while we were rowing, last September, on special 
friendships in the other life, and the fact that, as 
the Master had them, they must be right. I spoke 
of that. 

“ Certainly,” said Susie ; “ as each one has his 
affinities, he will seek for him whom he finds 
most congenial. So, varieties and harmonies, both, 
will arise.” Then, pointing to the glass doors 
opening into the conservatory, she added : 

“ If our flowers were all of one shape and color, 
what a monotonous show they would make ! It 
is wrong, I believe, to think of all the redeemed 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


165 


as one vast, indiscriminate host, singing one chorus 
together. We see and hear so much, on earth, of 
sects and parties and their jealousies, that the very 
existence of them seems to imply a wrangle. But 
we might as well assume that the violinist, in an 
orchestra, must quarrel with the bugler. God 
made us to differ in nature. It is born in us. 
You can force together people of various temper- 
aments, as you can stir together oil and water — 
but you no sooner stop than they begin to settle 
apart. A Presbyterian and a Methodist do not 
differ on election and falling from grace, only. 
Those are merely the flags they fly. How closely 
would it blend Frenchmen and Americans were 
they to adopt one flag ? The Presbyterian is staid 
and quiet, and the Methodist more demonstrative. 
So, we have poets and Gradgrinds, statisticians 
and artists, antiquarians and inventors. We need 
these different types of humanity to develop 
the full capacities of our nature. I heard a 
doctor once, lecturing, in word-pictures, to chil- 
dren. 

‘ When the chyle is ready for nutriment,’ he 
said, ‘ the little builders in the body are all after 
it. One trundles up his wheelbarrow and cries, 
i Give me some nail-stuff ! ’ Then off he goes 
with his load to build up nails. Another calls — 
‘bone-matter!’ another ‘ muscle - material ! ’ an- 


166 


BEYOND THE VEIT. 


other, c skin-supplies ! ’ So they run here and 
there, keeping up the whole body.’ 

Now, somewhat in this way, I take it, men and 
women of different tastes, talents, occupations, 
make the most of our common humanity. And 
I believe they will go on, doing so forever. No 
two will be exactly alike. Take out sin from these 
diversities, and the more of the diversities you 
have, the better. It is envy, jealousy, that make 
all the trouble. 

Without these contrasted characteristics, we 
could never explore the works of God, through- 
out the universe. In the fifteenth and sixteenth 
centuries, if the Columbuses and Cabots and De 
Gamas and Frobishers had not been born such 
adventurers that they could not resist the beckon- 
ing of the sea, how long might the New World 
have lain unknown! What would the philoso- 
phers or the poets have done to disclose it ? So, 
in the life beyond us, I suspect, some of the re- 
deemed, while others study and meditate, will go 
ranging among the worlds for new discoveries of 
the wisdom and love of our Father to his chil- 
dren. 

Here, too, will be room for love to find some- 
thing to do and to give. People ask what work 
there can be for love in a world where none are 
poor, or sick, or miserable.” 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


167 


“Yes,” I said, somewhat eagerly. “I have 
often raised that question.” 

“Why,” she replied, “every finite creature is 
both poor and rich, in relation to every other 
finite creature, and must be forever. That is, he 
has something which that other has not, and the 
other has something which he has not.” 

“But, to go on,” she continued, “of course 
every one of the redeemed is full to the overflow 
of love. If so, he delights to confer pleasure. 
And, to minds as active and alert as those in the 
life above, there must be exquisite pleasure in 
new information or ideas. Every explorer will 
rejoice, therefore, in conferring it. Imagine a 
company gathered there, when one of their 
number, returning from abroad, comes in an- 
nouncing, 

‘O friends, I have discovered a new world! 
No one of us, I am sure, has ever seen it before. 
And it is covered with such wonders from our 
Father’s hand as He has displayed, so far as I 
know, on no other world that He has created ! ’ 

“What was Columbus’s discovery to that? 
Remember, there is no necessity that an infinite 
Creator, should repeat Himself on any sphere 
that He calls into existence. If, of the untold 
billions of men who have lived, no two ever had 
faces alike, can He not vary the worlds as well ? 


168 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


And love can gather her contributions of knowl- 
edge from so much the larger field because the 
work of creation is doubtless in progress still. It 
w T ould be monstrous to suppose that, when the 
Lord had rolled on their orbits the hundred mil- 
lions of worlds that have been counted out by our 
telescopes, He fell, like the Hindoo Brahma, into 
inaction. He must exert his infinite resources, 
and they must be always immeasurably in advance 
. of any explorations of ours. 

But such discovery is only one line along which 
love may find her gifts. Every student, every 
scientist, every philosopher, among the happy 
millions, will make fresh discoveries and bring 
them into the common stock of knowledge. The 
old notion that God will disclose everything to 
us at once, by miraculous revelation, I do not ac- 
cept. We all know that the pleasure of acquiring 
is greater than that of possessing. Every success- 
ful merchant, even, tells us that. And I expect, 
for one, to be left to acquire knowledge there, 
somewhat as we do here.” 

If Susie’s mother had been in, she would before 
this, have put an end to our conversation. I be- 
gan to fear, myself, that the invalid was tiring 
herself out. So I proposed to bring George and 
Sybil, on Tuesday evening, to make up a sym- 
posium on these great themes that so interest all 


BEYQND THE VEIL. 


169 


four of us. And it was agreed that Susie should, 
in the main, let us do the talking. 


February 13. 

George came home, by agreement, earlier than 
usual, and we took tea in season to call for Sybil 
and leave plenty of time at Susie’s. When we 
arrived, I broached the subject for which we had 
come together by referring to Susie’s ideas of 
heavenly employments and asking Sybil’s views. 
I knew she was full to overflowing of the matter ; 
but she replied, as I supposed and rather hoped 
she would, 

“No ; let us hear from Mr. Vaughn.” 

George was as modest as she. But, by con- 
siderable prying and pushing, we at last started 
him. 

“ In regard to anything in the other life which 
is not clearly revealed in the Bible,” he said, “ we 
must of course speak, and even think, with rev- 
erent caution. But there are many inferences 
from what we certainly know, which I think we 
may hold with some confidence. For example, if 
there are incalculable millions of inhabitants there, 
if they are delivered from the incubus of sin, and 
so abounding in life, I judge that they must have 
an immense variety of occupations. Without that, 
I cannot conceive of them as happy. To a right- 


170 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


minded man, even here, laziness is misery. A 
limb that should be never exercised would grow 
flaccid and finally wither. That only eptomizes the 
universal law of all living creatures.” 

“ But George,” I interposed, “ when Adam had 
sinned, was not labor among the thorns imposed 
as a curse ? ” 

“ Yes and no, my dear,” he said. (How stiff 
and prosy that 44 my dear ” sounded ! It was the 
first time I had ever heard it from him.) 

“Adam and Eve, before they fell, had some- 
thing to do. They were put into the Garden 4 to 
dress and to keep it.’ But that was pleasant 
activity. Among the thorns, Adam had painful 
drudgery. A distinction with a difference ! And 
I suppose the work, whatever it may be, in which 
the redeemed are intensely active, is freer from care 
or toil or fatigue than the wing-strokes of a lark, 
as she soars into the sunlight in a fresh, spring 
morning. The spiritual body knows nothing of 
fatigue. 

44 When men had begun to sin, the necessity for 
labor — toilsome labor even — was no curse, but a 
blessing. It has saved the world from rush- 
ing down, as fast as it otherwise would, into lux- 
ury and vice and ruin. But, partly from a mis- 
understanding of that, and partly from laziness 
and selfishness, men have put a stigma on labor, 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


1Y1 


and counted those who are exempt from it the 
higher classes ! It is lucky for such higher classes 
that they do not air their aristocracy as bees in a 
hive. The useful citizens of that little community, 
wiser than we, would soon give them their deserts 
as they do the other drones. And there is no more 
place for them in heaven than in a bee-hive.” 

Upon which Susie showed, again, how heartily 
she could laugh. 

“ And is that all you can say,” I asked, “ as to 
the particular employments of the upper world?” 

“ .No,” said George, “ I think we can infer some 
of them as, at least, quite probable, from the very 
necessity of the case. If it is a redeemed society 
such as we would all gladly see below, there must 
be some sort of organization and government.” 

“But,” objected Sybil, “what need of govern- 
ment where there is no crime ? ” 

“Disorder and waste of labor,” he replied, 
“ might easily come from other sources than crime. 
The comparative ignorance of some, the want of 
skill in others — even the self-forgetful eagerness 
of many to do the same generous thing — might 
throw matters into confusion. Some arrangement 
and administration would be necessary. And, in 
those vast hosts and innumerable communities, no 
one can estimate how many may, in that way, be 
employed.” 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


172 

“ But now let us have your views, Miss Martin ; 
I have done more than my share of the talking.” 

“Well, I cannot add much,” said Sybil, “and 
would rather listen still to yon. I love to believe 
that the differences in work, in the other life, will 
not divide men into social castes as they do here. 
John Newton said that, if two angels were sent 
from heaven, one to rule a city and the other to 
sweep its streets, probably neither would go more 
gladly to his work than the other — neither feel 
that he was more or less honored than his brother. 
In short, I suppose it is love, not outward, inci- 
dental things like office or station, that wins regard 
in that high society. 

“ And, as to the employments there, I think one 
may be the instruction of those who, in long suc- 
cession through the centuries, are and will be 
passing over from the earth — and perhaps from 
other worlds as well. W T hy should not the worlds 
be so many fitting-schools for that grand, central 
university ? Whether or not there is anything 
like our pedagogies, some kind of instruction 
would seem inevitable as the natural course of 
things. And it must be a loving service, that will 
draw teacher and taught most tenderly together. 
Christian scholars, some of them, hold, I see, that 
where Paul speaks (1 -Cor. xv. 43) of the body 
being ‘sown’ in corruption, dishonor, weakness, 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


173 


he refers not to death and burial, but to birth into 
this life, as compared with birth into the next. 
‘ Weakness’ is hardly the word to apply to a dead 
body, but just the one for a babe. It implies some 
life.” 

“But,” I asked, “if we enter the other world 
in a kind of infancy, how could Paul make us 
raised in power ? ” 

“ O,” she replied, “ because he speaks by antici- 
pation, potentially. We are raised into the assur- 
ance of having power as we grow. A nurseryman 
says of little sprouts, a few inches high, ‘ This is 
an oak, and that an elm and that a maple ’ — not 
that they are now great shade-trees, but only cer- 
tain to become such. 

“ But, however all this may be, the older resi- 
dents of that unseen world must certainly know 
far more than the new comers, and must be glad 
to afford information. That will be one of the 
delightful occupations there.” 

Susie had been so absorbed in our subject, from 
the first, that she was just commencing herself, 
when I stopped her with a kiss, saying, 

“ You must not speak out in meeting ! I prom- 
ised your mother you should not.” 

So we adjourned the meeting without overtask- 
ing her strength. 


XYIII. 


March 26 . 

The commotion in the church has recalled my 
thoughts, since last I found time for my diary, 
from the other world to this. Good Dr. Bentley 
has got more light, in the last fortnight, on “ came 
not to send peace but a sword,” than the commen- 
taries would have given him in a twelvemonth. 
And George had to return from his peaceful com- 
munion with the spirits of the just made perfect 
to battle with spirits unjust and decidedly imper- 
fect. The dregs of the town have been thrown to 
the surface. The meanest passions that infest 
men’s souls have been stirred together in a witches’ 
caldron, over as hot a fire as ever was kindled 
from below, and it has been “ bubble, bubble, toil 
and trouble,” day after day. That the currents flow- 
ing in upon us have been, at least partly, from un- 
seen sources, I can easily perceive— but they were 
not celestial sources. 

We have had a struggle with the liquor-interest 
on local option. The issue was^ joined a fortnight 
( 174 ) 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


175 


ago last Monday, and our side routed the enemy. 
Dr. Bentley, though very conservative, theologi- 
cally, stood foremost in the fight for reform. The 
three saloonists, Sender, Diggs, and Twingley, hate 
him with a rancor that is, of course, the only honor 
they could confer, Sender, who led the others, 
with most of their customers, like a magnet trailed 
through sand draws all that is blackest in the town 
after himself. His priest sympathized, though 
rather inertly, with the reformers. But Sender 
had his origin far back in the Black Forest and 
confronts our Christian civilization with a barbar- 
ism that is really picturesque in the sharpness of 
the contrast. 

There have been Achans within the camp, too, 
who were boastfully sure that they had, under our 
good minister, a leverage that would pry him out of 
his position. But I feel like singing Deborah’s song 
of deliverance from the enemies of Israel. By the 
Lord’s grace, George and Dr. Larrabee were too 
much for the conspirators. The church stood 
manfully up to their duty, and Dr. Bentley is 
more firmly entrenched in their love and in his 
position than ever. 

April 4. 

Our good pastor’s wife has had the idea that 
whoever diverged from her rather mediaeval no- 
tions of truth must, to that degree, be falling away 


176 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


from the Master. As light and warmth are both 
from Him, darkness, she supposed, implied a chill. 
I think the heavenly spirit of Susie is perplexing 
her. Of a dead orthodoxy she has seen enough to 
know it. But a live heresy — or what she would 
reckon such — badly mystifies the good woman. 
That Susie is spiritually a shining light she cannot 
question. That there are no definite dark spots in 
contrast upon her, she is obliged to concede. But 
a kind of indefinite shadow, a haze of dangerous 
error, she still imagines that she perceives, afloat 
in that sick room. 

I verily believe she will draw a long breath of 
relief when Susie has passed away. She knows 
that it would be a blessed exchange for the depart- 
ed, and she herself would be delivered from some 
sore perplexities. Being mentally rather inert, 
and preferring to hug the shore of established 
tenets, she dreads to be drawn out into the open. 

She is charmed by the beauty of Susie’s thought 
and hope and aspiration, and yet haunted by the 
query whether it is not a dangerous charm around 
which she must cautiously hover rather than take 
it into fellowship. 

Last Sunday she had a new shock. Feeling 
that it would be an act of mercy, if not of neces- 
sity, to call upon Susie, she went over in the after- 
noon, As she entered the room, she saw that the 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


177 


invalid, sitting propped up by pillows, was quite 
busy with two or three ragged little waifs from 
the street. Mrs. Bentley is very short-sighted, 
and at first supposed she was reading to them 
in the Bible spread in her lap. But, as she 
reached the bed, what was her amazement to see 
that it was a spelling-book, and that Susie was 
actually teaching them their letters on the Sabbath ! 
Moreover, the delinquent seemed not in the least 
embarrassed at being discovered — and that, by the 
pastor’s wife — in the very act. As Susie saw her 
eyes fixed on the school-book with a look of aston- 
ishment, she couldn’t help, as she tells me, an 
amused expression which would hardly go far to 
atone for her offense. I note here the conversa- 
tion, as nearly as I can recall it, from Susie’s ac- 
count. 

Mrs. Bentley’s eyes had so plainly remonstrated 
with her that she used her tongue in reply. 

“ You are shocked at seeing me keeping day- 
school on Sunday, Mrs. Bentley ; that is plain 
enough.” 

“ Why y-yes,” she replied, “ I shall have to con- 
fess that I am.” 

“ Well, I must do something. I cannot be idle. 
If I could expect to be here long enough to make 
it worth while, I would have a telephone to the 
church and get some of the service.” 


178 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


“ You have the Best of Books on the stand here, 
I see.” 

“ Yes, and I read it some, this forenoon. But 
for me that is a pure luxury — almost a selfish one.” 

“ W-what, my dear ? ” asked the good lady, be- 
wildered ; “ I don’t understand you.” 

“ Well, the fact is, I am teaching these little 
fellows that they may read their Bibles. Their 
mothers are so poor and need their help so much 
that they can spare them only on Sundays. This 
costs me some self-denial. Beading the Bible 
would not. It would be an indulgence — some- 
thing for myself, and it is more blessed to give 
than to receive.” 

“ But why not do this on a week-day ? ” 

“ I have just shown why ; and besides I do not 
want to do it on a week day. It is the most thor- 
oughly Christian, the most sacred, use I could find 
for the Sabbath. I think I get nearer the Master 
just now and am more acceptable to Him, with 
my spelling-book than I could with a hymn- 
book.” 

“ But you believe in church-going ? ” 

“ Certainly I do — for those able to go. But 
the spirit in which we act is the great matter. 
To one who has a right spirit a boy’s alphabet 
may be as much a means of grace as a church 


service/ 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


179 


“ Well, I declare ! ” cried Mrs. Bentley, as we 
met in the street, next day. “ Susie Wickham is 
the strangest girl I ever came across. I found her 
keeping day-school on Sunday, and she thought 
that better than reading her Bible ! ” 

“ Let us go over to-morrow,” I said, “ and see 
her. I suspect you do not fully understand her 
meaning. This little jar between you and her is 
only a meeting of the tides on the surface. Down 
below you are of one spirit.” 

Of this last I had no doubt. But, whether Mrs. 
Bentley could be made to see it was another affair. 
And, as they began, it seemed very decidedly 
another affair. 

“ I don’t see the right,” said Mrs. Bentley, “ of 
taking secular work into the Sabbath.” 

“ And 1 don’t see,” replied Susie, with a gentle 
smile, “ the ground for this sharp distinction be- 
tween things sacred and things secular. The Jews 
were constantly complaining of the Saviour’s want 
of regard for sacred times, like the Sabbath, and 
of sacred places, like the temple, which last, He 
told them, would soon have not one stone stand- 
ing on another.” 

“ What \ ” — that He aimed to lower their re- 
gard — ” 

“ Pardon me ! ” cried Susie, — “ no, not by any 
means. He wanted to level up, not down, to 


180 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


make every time and place sacred to the service of 
God and the welfare of men. The Pharisees* 
with a farthing-rushlight, threw their glimmer of 
artificial sanctity on this tiling and that; but He, 
as the Sun of Righteousness, would flood all things 
with consecration and w T ith the glory of heaven. 
Every duty has its season. If we ought not to plow 
or trade on Sunday, neither ought we to hold a 
prayer-meeting in a busy store on Monday. Sell- 
ing goods, or making nails or calico is, or ought 
to be, as real a service to God as preaching. A 
model Christian will carry as much love of the 
Master into a counting-house or a studio as into a 
church.” 

“Well, this is new doctrine ! ” cried Mrs. Bent- 
ley, turning, in amazement, to me. “ The Sabbath 
no more sacred than any other day ! ” 

“ Certainly,” said Susie, — “ only sacred to differ- 
ent uses from the other days. This notion of 
sacred and secular begets the idea that the week, 
days are common and second-rate — days in which 
we ignore the Lord and his ownership of us.” 

“ You can see this distinction jealously drawn,” 
I said, “ in any religious newspaper of half a cen- 
tury ago. I was looking over one the other day. 
Every editorial, or paragraph among the notes or 
advertisements, is as pious as any preacher. The 
editor mewed himself up in his seclusion, and 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


181 


peered through his loop-holes at the wicked world 
rushing by — a ghost, as to any concern he has 
with his times. But the religious editor of our 
day throws open his windows, and looks out to see 
things sacred and secular alike through Christian 
eyes, and bring Christian principles to bear upon 
them all.” 

“Just so,” said Susie; “this notion has come 
down to us from the old, dead ages, in which they 
viewed religion as a make-weight, counterbalancing 
a bad life, from without, rather than as a new 
principle, pervading and purifyingit within. And 
the same notion has infected our ideas of the other 
world.” 

“ But you cannot possibly mean,” cried Mrs. 
Bentley, “ that they do secular things in heaven ? ” 

“Why not?” replied Susie, adjusting the pil- 
lows behind herself. “ Of course I do. That is 
exactly what I mean.” 

“ That would be no heaven for me,” cried Mrs. 
Bentley, with a resolute shake of her head. 
“ Think of it ! — a heaven as common as a week- 
day ! ” 

“ Can anything be common, through which our 
Father is honored and served ? ” asked Susie. 

“ But somehow,” said Mrs. Bentley, uneasily, 
“ I cannot see as much sanctity in a wash-tub or 
dinner-pot, as in a hymn-book.” 


182 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


“ Perhaps,” replied Susie, “ if you say a hand- 
saw or a chisel, you may.” 

“How so?” cried the old lady, surprised. 
“ What is there more sacred in either of them ? ” 

“ Do you remember who pushed the hand-saw 
and drove the chisel, for fifteen years, in Naza- 
reth ? ” asked Susie, looking up earnestly into her 
face. “And do you expect to find any finer 
purity or higher sanctity than His, in heaven ? ” 
Mrs. Bentley’s eyes fell, as Susie continued. 

“ I believe that Jesus gave to the carpenter’s 
bench, among the shavings, and to bargains with 
customers, so many years, to break up our misera- 
ble notion that there is, or can be, anything more 
pure or sacred, on earth or in heaven, than honest 
work, done in obedience to God.” 

Mrs. Bentley had lost her surprised look, and 
was eagerly leaning forward, with her hand on the 
bed. 

“But Christians,” Susie continued, “backslid 
from His wisdom into their own folly. With 
their fiction that there is something corrupt in 
matter, they concluded that, the farther they could 
escape from it into spiritual abstractions, the purer 
they should be. So, instead of battling with the 
world’s temptations, and winning the fight like 
men, they decamped from the field, in a cowardly 
panic, into monkish cells and anchorites’ caves. 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


183 


There they nursed their phantasy that in secular 
life there is a contamination, from which, in 
heaven, we are to escape. So, there has come 
down to us, through the centuries, this notion of 
the life above, as a kind of celestial monastery, in 
which nothing goes on but an endless liturgy. 

Our hymns are colored with that idea. Where 
is the authority for 

* Congregations ne’er break up, 

And Sabbaths have no end.’ 

I believe that Sabbaths have no beginning 
there. The redeemed can have no use, as I see, 
for a Sabbath. We need it here , in the clatter of 
business, and with our bent toward worldliness — 
but there, with no such distraction, it has outlived 
its usefulness.” 

“But don’t you suppose,” asked Mrs. Bentley, 
“ that the Lord, in his wisdom and power and 
glory, will absorb us there ? ” 

“Certainly I do,” said Susie. “And, for that 
very reason, I do not believe in singing psalms 
forever. He is so magnificently vast — so varied 
in his works and ways! If we are to praise Him 
with any ardor, we must know something of what 
He has done and is doing in the universe. 

You call astronomy a secular science, I sup- 
pose. You would not study it on Sunday. But 


184 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


how, without a knowledge of it there, are you to 
look into the wonders of creation in all the worlds ? 
So with geology, chemistry, biology, botany, and 
all the rest. Now, every scientist travels along 
his favorite line of study, year after year, and then 
confesses that he has hardly started— that the path 
reaches away into the mists of the unknown. 
And do you conclude that a road has stopped 
where it enters a fog? Are we to advance, in ex- 
ploring the works of God, till we reach the veil, 
and then, beyond, lay all aside, to sing and pray 
forever? For my part, I believe that, as we go 
on and on, discovering new heights and depths 
and immensities of what God has wrought, they 
will swell the flood of our adoration as with Spring- 
tides rising over all.” 

Susie was tired, and I begged her to stop. But, 
from some cause, perhaps the fine April weather, 
in which the windows have been open, she seems 
stronger than a few weeks ago. Anyway, she in- 
sisted that she would finish what she now had to 
say, and rest afterward. 

“And another point,” she went on to say. 
“ What could we do, without what you count sec- 
ular things, to develop our full powers in heaven ? 
Worship calls out but one section of the whole cir- 
cle of our being. But, as to insight, courage, per- 
severance, organizing power, skill in admin istra- 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


185 


tion, use of memory — with a score of other facul- 
ties, and the joy we have in the exercise of them 
— are all these to lie dormant forever ? Why, we 
should be like a vine, from which the gardener 
prunes every cluster but one, to develop that. Or, 
worse, we should be as Blind Tom, with a genius for 
music, but as to all things else — you know what. 

Paul teaches us that we are to put away child- 
ish things in the upper world, and be rounded out 
to the full, grand ripeness of our being. How 
much wealth or compass would there be in a 
Christian here , who had done nothing but repeat 
a liturgy, year in and out — a choir-boy, fit for 
nothiug else ? And, for how humiliating a reason 
it is, that Christians deny what they call secular 
occupations in the other world ! The reservoir of 
spiritual life in them is so nearly empty that only 
meager rills of it trickle into their secular affairs. 
They can hardly conceive of enough of it to flood 
these affairs equally with their worship. But, as 
we ripen, there above, O how different it will be ! 
Holiness unto the Lord, as Zcchariah has it, shall 
be upon the bells of the horses. In everything 
and everywhere our common love to God and men 
shall flow, like the blood through the body, into 
every possible employment of the redeemed. 
Every industry shall be only another name for 
a Christian service.” 


186 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


April 20. 

I was called away to the kitchen, as I was writ- 
ing those last lines — and now my darling Susie 
has taken her flight heavenward! I was at her 
beside every day — almost every hour, and have 
had no time till now for a word in my diary. 
Dear creature ! simply to be near her was a sancti- 
fication in itself. She reminded me of what I 
have heard of St. Peter’s Church at Rome — that 
it is so large as to have a climate of its own. She 
had a soul great and pure enough to carry a 
heavenly atmosphere of her own. I felt as if 
breathing a kind of spiritual oxygen. 

She revolutionized my idea of a death-scene as 
one of gloom. Instead of seeming a weakling 
whom we must support and comfort, she lifted us 
all with her victorious joy. She appeared to be 
already at the heavenly level and to pass rather 
horizontally than vertically into the other world. 
Her view that death makes no immediate change 
in character I could easily accept in regard to her- 
self. I had a feeling that a heaven full of such 
spirits as she, gathered around the common Master, 
would be heaven enough for me — at least to 
begin with. 

That talk, reported in my last entry, was more 
than she had strength to bear. We little thought 
that, through the whole of it, the soul was slowly 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


187 


breaking away — that every sentence snapped some 
strand of the cords that held it. As a great bless- 
ing to us, she failed so slowly and with so little 
pain, that she was thoroughly herself to the last 
moment. Some go into the Dark River as over 
a cliff ; but she was led down a gentle slope. 

“ O Alice ! ” she said, one day, “ you cannot 
imagine the ecstasy I have in the presence of the 
Master here, and the prospect — though it seems 
hardly possible — of his fuller and more glorious 
presence soon ! You thought you were happy 
when led to your marriage — and your face did 
beam like the full moon. But it could have been 
hardly a shadow of this. Not only the joy is so 
great, but there is a quality in it that I can no 
more describe than I can the flavor of a fruit that 
you have never tasted.” 

But George has come in, and I must lay this by, 
till to-morrow. 


XIX. 


Apkil 21 . 

Susie’s triumph over all fear of death was so 
complete that I must garner here as many as pos- 
sible of her words before they escape me. 

“ The Master seems so near me,” she said, “ that 
I can almost put out my hand and touch Him. I 
am sure it would not startle me to hear His voice 
in the room. It would seem the most natural of 
all things. He is to me what the guide was, at 
Niagara, when I went down through the Cave of 
the Winds. At first I feared the awful plunge of 
so many tons of water from far aloft, and the rush 
aHd roar of all the elements around. But, when 
the man led one of our party safely down, and 
then, reappearing, called for me, I took his hand 
and, clinging to that, felt as safe as upon Goat 
Island. Our dear Lord went through this to 
which I have nearly come, and returned, at his 
resurrection, to take tens of thousands of his peo- 
ple over. Why should I tremble in such care as 
that ? 


( 188 ) 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


189 


And, as I was thinking, this morning, before 
you came, what we call death seems to me like a 
tunnel our train passed through, on that same trip 
westward. When we reached it and looked in, it 
was blacker than midnight. It appeared dreadful 
to go plunging through, not knowing what we 
might strike. But suddenly, as we entered and the 
daylight vanished, the electric lights were turned 
on, and the whole line, to the exit, flashed and 
glowed with a glare like noon. 

How foolish to talk of being resigned to death ! 
In the New Testament there is no such idea. It 
was to staying here that Paul had to resign him- 
self. 4 To me to live is Christ, and to die is gain? 
Imagine a young captain resigning himself to a 
generalship ! — an heir resigned to a fortune of a 
million ! We are Christian in our doctrine — and 
heathen in our speech. It seems to me a sacrilege 
— this disguising the sweet and gracious angel 
who comes to welcome us at the gateway into eter- 
nal life, and making him masquerade as the hide- 
ous King of Terrors. I hope there will be no 
broken shaft erected on my grave, as if the transi- 
tion were a wreck of life, a blasting of all hope 
and promise. If there were to be any symbol in 
marble, far better a little nest, with a new-fledged 
eaglet taking flight from it for the skies, or some 
other emblem of the beginning of the new and 


190 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


more glorious life — not the mere end of the old 
one. 

“ But now, Alice,” she went on to say, “ I have 
something to propose. I thank our dear Lord, 
that, in view of the great change, I am full of joy. 

‘ Though I go through the valley of the shadow of 
death I will fear no evil ; for thy rod and thy staff 
they comfort me.’ But, you know, it has been 
said that a Christian, leaving the world, catches, 
even this side of the veil, some glimpse of the 
scenes beyond. I see nothing unreasonable or un- 
lawful in the possibility of that. If the 6 minister- 
tering spirits’ are around us, waiting for our de- 
parture to them, why should they not — when we 
have passed too far into the River to turn back and 
make disclosures — be allowed to comfort us with a 
sight of themselves ? I have often wished that, if 
it were God’s will, 1 might test that for myself. 
And now I have come to where, perhaps, I can do 
it. Of course I may drop off suddenly. I may 
sink into unconsciousness. But I may not. I 
may be myself, to the last breath. And, if I am, 
provided I discover any trace of the realities into 
which I shall be passing, I would like to make 
some sign af it. I can think of nothing lighter 
or easier than looking — of course without moving 
the head — in one direction or another. Please, 
therefore, when the time shall come, press my 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


191 


cheek with your finger, every few minutes. I 
will take that as your question whether I make the 
least discovery, and will turn my eyes to the right 
for yes, to the left for no. You will ? ” 

Of course, I assented. Had it not been for 
Susie’s perfect peace, which put me so entirely at 
my ease, had she not been so natural and composed 
in all she said, I should have been overawed in the 
thought of venturing out with her into the edge of 
the shadows. But I knew we should both be acting 
reverently, and I could not believe the Master would 
count it presumptuous. Moreover, Susie was so 
calm and well-balanced, so little liable to any wild 
phantasy, that I felt, for that reason, more interest 
in this strange way of inqniry. She had taken no 
anodyne or stimulant. Her powers were all fail- 
ing alike and abreast of one another — no one so 
specially defective or deranged as to throw her 
into confusion. Mind and body were acting, 
though feebly, yet as nearly normally as perhaps 
would be possible when approaching the end. 

Of course we could not choose our hour of day 
or night. We could only await the hour the Lord 
should choose. The doctor said she could hardly 
remain with us now more than a day or two. 

On Tuesday, at about nine o’clock in the fore- 
noon, the hour had apparently arrived. It was 
one of the loveliest of spring mornings. The air 


192 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


was so mild that the windows were partly open, 
and the fragrance of the violet-beds and lilac buds 
was wafted in. The robins were returning from 
the south, and a pair of them were busily building 
a nest within a rod of the house. The balmy day 
must have contributed something to the deep joy 
of Susie’s inner life. 

I was really afraid I might be absorbed rather 
in watching her face than in the inquiry in hand. 
I had always thought her beautiful ; but she 
seemed now going through a slow transfiguration. 
Though her features, of course, were pale — not 
emaciated — there w T as in them a flush of the soul 
that relieved them of any deadness of color. Her 
auburn hair, in great, rich masses, lay disheveled 
on the pillow, and her eyes had in them a light 
that I had never seen there before. Even my 
grief at losing her was, for the time, overcome by 
my perfect admiration as I sat and gazed. The 
soul seemed resolved to fill its dwelling with one 
grand illumination before the final departure. 

When I intimated that the doctor thought her 
near the end, she smiled in such a flood of joy 
that, for the moment, I forgot George and our dear 
home, and father and mother and all at the old 
home, and fairly wished myself in her place. 
There seems to me to be as much difference in 
the range of expression of eyes as of tongues. 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


193 


Susie could say more with hers in a half minute 
than most men could utter with the voice in a 
half hour. Indeed I had a fear that they would 
convey so much as to confuse me in regard to their 
real meaning, during the inquiry she had planned. 
But, a little after, the failing life-power seemed to 
deplete all that, as if the soul had half withdrawn, 
and to leave her meaning clear. 

The family had consented to her wish in the 
matter — they would have consented to anything — 
and I took my place by the bed, with the father 
and mother, heart-broken and in tears, on the 
other side. 

She had apparently been in silent prayer, and 
not fully aware that we were ready for the in- 
quiry. When I pressed her cheek with my finger, 
she instantly opened her eyes with a quick glance 
of recognition, and turned them to the left, evi- 
dently intimating that she had full presence of 
mind. 

We supposed her time had come. But she 
showed more vitality than we expected. Whether 
this was a mere animal life-power, or whether the 
soul, reluctant to break up its familiar domicile, 
half-unconsciously held to it, was, of course, un- 
known to us. Perhaps almost equally to her. 
She appeared — if I may speak of her as apart 
from the body — to come up, at times, to the eyes, 


194 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


looking out with a glimpse that was slight, yet sig- 
nificant, and then retiring again, more deeply 
within. Was she exploring within, ranging 
through the familiar rooms and inquiring if she 
could be content to leave them ? Or was she 
studying them as a contrast with the new abode 
in prospect, to congratulate herself upon that f 

It was beautiful to see how, when I whispered 
softly the Name that is above every name, in an 
instant her eyes flashed back their glad recogni- 
tion, and the lips started as if they would delight 
to be loud in praise. 

It was, perhaps, only a fancy of mine, but I 
seemed to detect, through the eyes, a groping of 
the soul, with an inner sense to which spiritual 
realities would open — a peering after the discovery 
that she might report to me. She appeared to 
recognize that she could see only what it was in 
her to see, and to be endeavoring to fall into fuller 
harmony with that for which she hoped. 

At one time, along the course of those strange 
hours, when I touched her cheek, she responded, 
at once, with the eyes, but was evidently in so 
ecstatic a frame as to have forgotten, for an in- 
stant, the question I was asking and to be only 
gazing and wondering and adoring Him who was 
to her, all in all. 

But when, a few minutes after, I repeated the 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


195 


question, she opened her eyes and looked directly 
into mine, with as full a recognition as if to say, 
“Yes, I know,” and then turned them to the left. 
This perfect self-possession gave me the fullest 
confidence in the language in which she was 
speaking. Though she had no longer strength to 
articulate a syllable, and though the soul was 
already arising and taking the first steps of its 
departure, it had dismissed nothing of its con- 
sciousness or lost communication with the friends 
it was leaving. 

In response to one touch, her eyes responded 
with an instant and decided turn to the left, as if 
they were perceiving nothing but a blank. At 
the next inquiry, they veered falteringly the other 
way, as if something had crossed the field of the 
inner vision, but whether a shadow or a living 
figure she could not determine. The next time 
she looked part way toward the right ; then the 
pupils paused and fluctuated, and finally, as if dis- 
appointed, passed slowly to the left. Once, when 
they were inclining hopefully to an affirmative, a 
sudden gleam came into them .that thrilled me 
with expectation, but soon faded with only a 
negative behind it. 

So the hours glided on till three in the after- 
noon, when, as quietly as an evening breeze dies 
away, her last breath left us desolate. She had 


196 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


given no sign of a discovery, on which we could 
rely — and I tliink I shall be, through life, exceed- 
ingly suspicious of such signs. 

Had she seemed, before the end came, Overcome 
with any fear, had there been, in the whole scene, 
anything to excite compassion, the gloom of her 
departure, to us, would have been many shades 
lighter. But we felt that an uplifting power had 
suddenly passed from beneath us and let us fall. 
We were all prostrated alike, and, as we gazed on 
the beautiful, fleshly casket, from which such a 
jewel had been removed, we could do nothing but 
weep together. 


-3 


XX. 


June 12, 1883. 

My! how time has flown since my last entry 
here ! Tt seems but a month or two since I was 
following dear Susie to the edge of that great 
mystery into which she passed. But this bouncing 
Phil of ours — already nearly two years old — is 
evidence enough that that chronology is somewhat 
awry. 

The boy is the image of his father. There is 
no Herbert about him that I can see. He is all 
Yaughn. And, every time I glance at George 
and then at the looking-glass, I am glad of it. 
How profoundly mysterious, how wonderful, is 
this law of heredity ! The physical connection of 
the father with the son is as nothing. Yet all the 
lines of the father’s personality, intellectual, moral, 
often the spiritual, as well — converging and focus- 
ing in a microscopic point, then, in the child, di- 
verge again, to cover his whole, ever-expanding 
being! How awful the parents’ responsibility! 
A responsibility too, that strikes so far below the 

( 197 ) 


198 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


surface of his life to the very core of his being — 
below all he says and does to what he is ! How 
immeasurable the importance that the child be well 
born ! I thank God for a husband who transmits 
no ruinous taint to our boy. 

At times I seem to see Phil’s future life and 
character in him as he is to-day. Or, rather, I 
should say, around him. To my imagination a 
larger Phil envelops him— a shadowy outline, to 
the full scope of which he is growing, day by day. 
How little the child dreams of all my thoughts as 
I watch him ! He walks from the table to the 
fire, and thinks nothing of it, while I whisper to 
myself, “ George’s very gait ! How soon, in all 
but the name, he will come to be another George ! ” 
So, when I see his father in his eyes, and the 
child wonders why I gaze at him so intently. 

George amused him, this afternoon, after tea, 
by mounting a broomstick and letting Phil drive 
him around the room. The coachman soon tired 
of driving, upon which George took to his hands 
and knees, and Phil bestrode him, as far as his lit- 
tle legs would reach, belaboring him with a twisted 
newspaper “ to make my hossy go.” Mrs. Bent- 
ley called, during the performance, and I tried to 
frighten George back to his dignity and into his 
chair. But he only welcomed her cordially where 
he was, begging her to excuse him. He says he 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


199 


was only fulfilling, in part, liis paternal promise, 
made at Pliil’s baptism. He knew, and I ought 
to have known, that Mrs. Bentley would have the 
good sense to enjoy it. 

The good woman has felt specially drawn toward 
us since George so heroically defended her hus- 
band in the Society meeting, And what she sees 
of George’s sterling, Christian character consider- 
ably abates her horror of his heresies. But to-day 
she was in quite a state of mind, from a discussion 
she had had with Sybil, on which she was curious 
to get George’s opinion. So, when Phil had been 
sent to bed, she began. 

“I would rather like to know, Mr. Vaughn, 
what you and your good wife think about some 
of Sybil’s notions of heaven. I can’t promise to 
subscribe to all you may say, for, you see,” she 
added, laughing, “ I’m a little suspicious of your 
orthodoxy. But I shall be glad to hear. Sybil 
says she believes there is humor, wit, in heaven — 
that they have an idea of the ludicrous ! Think 
of that!” 

“ Well,” said George, “ I often have thought of 
it.” I have an idea that the traditional notion of 
something questionable in wit and humor, came 
down — lik e the idea of an endless Sabbath and 
the exclusion of anything “ secular” — from the 
Dark Ages. All over Europe, in the remains of 


200 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


mediaeval, Christian art, you find the dolefulest 
faces. I should think the artists had pictured 
their nightmmares. Except a few such masters as 
Kaphael, they seem to have thought a choice as- 
sortment of horrors was the finest offering they 
could make from their art to Heaven. So it was, 
largely, among the Puritans, and still later. Pres- 
ident Edwards wrote — “ Pesolved never to speak 
anything that is ludicrous, or matter of laughter, 
on the Lord’s Day.” How many of the best Chris- 
tians in the land, in our time, would you get to 
sign that promise? How many ought you to get? 

It is this celestial monastery idea, too common 
in the churches, that so dulls the attractiveness of 
the better world. Satan would like to throw a lit- 
tle more unnatural gloom into the place, for us. It 
is just in his line — just the commodity he deals in.” 

“ Well,” said Mrs. Bentley, rising and drawing 
her shawl around her, “ I guess I have enough 
matter for thought, for the present. I must take 
it home and look it over, with my good man, and 
conclude how much to accept.” 

“ Winnow it, that is,” said George, with a laugh, 
as he went for his hat to escort her,” and blow 
away the chaff.” 

“I did not say that,” she replied. “It all looks 
more plausible than I should have thought pos- 
sible, an hour ago,’ ? 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


201 


So they went out, aud I came to my desk, where 
I am jotting down the conversation. 


June 15. 

George came home early, by appointment, yes- 
terday afternoon, and he and Sybil and I went, 
for a ramble, up Mount Sassacus. The monster 
which bears that name — as I must remember, if 
we should ever move away from here — stretches 
his long neck, and mane shaggy with firs and 
maples, down to the plain behind ; but, toward the 
village, confronts us with his grim, perpendicular 
face, four hundred feet from the chin to the hair. 

We passed along the road, by the river. The 
quiet stream was a silvery mirror, reflecting the 
trees on the opposite bank. The images seemed 
as clear and bold as the originals. For the matter 
of vividness, it would have been hard to tell 
which were the reflections. The elms and birches 
in the water appeared as real and substantial as 
those in the air, — as able, if left alone, to hold 
their place. 

One could not have seen that the stream was 
moving, but for the little tell-tale ripple, where it 
parted at the wooden pier of the bridge. 

It is queer how the fringe of the village, in its 
outskirts on that side, frays out as one goes toward 
the mountain — (toy-mountain, I suppose they 


202 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


would call it in Colorado) — to a shanty about the 
size of a hencoop. But the poverty of a shawl 
generally shows most at the edges, and so it 
seems with towns. 

We passed Joe Newhall’s cow feeding by the 
edge of the road. The poor thing has no home 
to go to, except when Joe can get something from 
her. She picks up her living, like other tramps, 
along the highway. I wish they were all as in- 
nocent and as useful as she. 

After the path began to work its way up around 
the edge of the cliff, I thought it taught me a les- 
son. Often it met great trees and rocks that com- 
pelled it to turn aside. But right on it weut, if 
not directly then zig-zag, but never giving out. 
And, as we trudged along up, though, in a warm 
summer-day, there was not much fun in it, I 
could not help thinking how much easier it was 
than a spiritual rise. Moreover, as we slipped and 
backslid on this ascent, there was no pang of re- 
morse — an immense difference ! 

In due time we reached the “ Devils’ pulpit.” 
That broad, flat rock gives the finest view in the 
whole region. Why do we attribute so many a 
grand, natural object to his satanic majesty ? Be- 
cause we feel that it is somehow superhuman, and 
yet shrink from attaching a Divine name to it ? 

Some philanthropist has contrived a rustic seat 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


203 


up there, and we were glad enough to accept his 
hospitality. The trees, down below, in which we 
could lookinto the birds’ nests, the river, stealing into 
and out of the groves on its way, the white homes 
amidst the foliage, and the far-off, solemn sea, were a 
rich return for the toil on the mountain slope. 

Sybil, being a teacher, was not often with us 
and the fact of our meeting now, though only so 
far up toward heaven, reminded us all of dear 
Susie and her speculations on the life of which 
she now knows so well. 

“ Yon haven’t heard, Sybil,” I said, “ that Mrs. 
Bentley came to us, the other day, in something of 
a strait about your other- world heresies ? ” 

“No,” she replied, “but I hope you relieved 
her, partly at least. I wouldn’t pain the dear, old 
lady for the world. She has a row of by-gone no- 
tions, hung up around the chambers of her inner 
life, of which, for her sake, I would not make 
light. She takes them down, occasionally, and 
dusts them off and looks them over, and puts 
them back, but I think I see that she already be- 
gins to discover the moth-eaten spots. 

But, going back, for a little, to the general 
subject which has been so favorite a one with us 
all, as it w T as with Susie Wickham, I have often 
thought that the angels are less to us, in our antici- 
pations, than they ought to be.” 


204 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


u How do yon mean ? ” I asked. 

“ Well,” she replied, “ we mass them together? 
indiscriminately. We make an angel an angel, 
neither more nor less. They lose all distinction — 
all individuality. But it is not so that the Bible 
represents them. They differ there. The three 
who came to Abraham appeared so much like 
common men, that he seems to have taken them 
as such. They do not appear to have terrified 
him, at all. And Gabriel seems to have always 
come for comfort and consolation. But the one 
Matthew mentions, at the sepulchre, frightened 
the Homan legionaries — men not easily alarmed — 
almost out of their lives. Each angel acts as if he 
had a distinct personality of his own. Why 
shouldn’t he? What reason is there to doubt that 
each is as absolutely himself, with all his peculiari- 
ties, as Wesley compared with Luther, or Wash- 
ington with Lincoln ? ” 

“ But,” said I, “ among men here, the great dif- 
ferences are due, I suppose, to heredity and to 
national traits.” 

“ Yes,” replied Sybil, “ and no one knows what 
separate nationalities there may be among the 
angels. Anyway, if God created them, He ad- 
hered, we may be sure, to no one monotonous type 
of creature. That would not be like Him. 

“ But what an acquaintance, a friend, would 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


205 


each one of these lords of immortality be ! So 
transcendent in his being and powers — yet so gen- 
tle and meek and tender in his love ! Think of 
learning from him when, where and how he came 
into existence, and what experiences he has had 
through the centuries ! Gabriel was the same 
being, of course, when he brought the heavenly 
errand to Daniel (viii. 16, ix. 21) as when he came 
to Zechariah and to Mary (Luke i. 19, 26) six 
hundred years later. Then, what studies must our 
angel-friend have pursued ? What views does he 
hold ? Being finite and limited dn knowledge, he 
must have, at various points, different views from 
his brethren. He must see truth from his own 
point, and under the phases of it that appear to 
him. What exhaustless sources of interest in all 
this! And, if there are millions in the angelic 
races, what a vista opens to us in that ! ” 

“ Yes,” said George, who had been enjoying the 
view below us, through his field-glass, but had 
now turned, with deepening interest, toward 
Sybil, “ and another source of instruction and hap_ 
piness, there, far transcends even this. It oc- 
curred to me the other day, as I was thinking how 
my father used to tell us children of his own boy- 
hood, of his old home and school and friends, and 
where he went and what he did. There was a 
sort of weird charm about it, as I tried, with my 


206 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


boyish fancy, to crowd down his portly presence 
into the roundabout and broad collar of a young- 
ster like me. 

“ But what I was coming to, what all this sug- 
gested, is something quite different. As I thought 
of father’s loving way of unfolding to us his ear- 
lier life, the query arose, what if he should prove 
to be, in this, as at so many other points, a type of 
the Infinite Father ! What if He should disclose, 
for our wonder and instruction and delight, the in- 
terminable past of his existence ! The biography 
of God — the self-existent J ehovah, who never be- 
gan to be — what must it not involve ! Life im- 
plies activity — infinite life, a boundless activity. 
Keverently we may ask — and some time receive 
an answer — What has lie been doing through 
those measureless ages ? What worlds has he cre- 
ated ? — with what inhabitants? God is love. And 
His benevolence, demanding intelligent, moral 
creatures on whom to expend its blessings, would 
call them into existence. It is sometimes asked, 
you know, what we could find to occupy us, that 
eternity would not exhaust. Here opens one em- 
ployment, of which, if every world of the universe 
had been explored, we could nevermore reach the 
end.” 

George’s thought had so seemed to loom up in 
its greatness, that we fell, for a while, into a silence 


BEYOND THE VEIL. 


207 


— little disposed to talk. A kind of solemn awe 
— yet rich in peace and happiness — stole over us, 
as the descending sun behind began to throw east- 
ward the broad, deep shadow of old Sassacus. The 
thought of so transcendent joys brought to me, 
daring to expect them, a sombre sense of unwor- 
thiness. And, as we came dow T n the pathway 
home, three stanzas of Hillhouse’s wonderful hymn 
kept chanting themselves within me : 

“ Earth has a joy unknown in heaven, 

The new-born joy of sins forgiven! 

Tears of such pure and deep delight. 

Ye angels! never dimmed your sight. 

“ Ye saw, of old, on chaos rise 
The beauteous pillars of the skies; 

Ye know where morn exulting springs, 

And evening folds her drooping wings. 

“ But I amid your choirs shall shine, 

And all your knowledge shall be mine; 

Ye on your harps must lean to hear 
A secret chord that mine will bear ! ” 


THE END,. 




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